"Mr. Brant!" Charlotte's tone was that of complete surprise.
"You were not expecting me?" He shook hands, gazing at her in undisguised pleasure. He was not much taller than she, and the afternoon sun was at his back, so he had the advantage.
"I certainly was not. How does it happen? A business journey?"
"A most luckily opportune one—for me. It brought me within a hundred miles, and my descriptions to my friend of an interesting region did the rest."
His eyes swerved to the figure of Miss Edith Austin, standing tensely by the rosebush, an observer whose whole aspect denoted eager absorption in the meeting before her. Charlotte presented him. Miss Austin expressed herself as assured of his being a stranger to the town the moment her eyes fell upon him.
"And a very dusty and disreputable one, I'm afraid," Mr. Brant declared. "I should have stopped at some hotel and made myself presentable," he explained to Charlotte, "if I had not been afraid I should lose a minute out of the short time Van Schoonhoven agrees to leave me here."
Charlotte took him to the house and left him politely trying to converse with her grandmother—at tremendous odds, for he was not a rival of Red Pepper Burns in his fondness for old ladies, not to mention deaf ones. The photographer returned to her sitter.
"I have several pictures of you now, Miss Austin," she said, "and I think among them we shall find one you will like."
"But aren't you going to have one of this last pose?" Miss Austin inquired, anxiously. "Of course, I know you have company now—"
"That doesn't matter. But I have two exposures, by the rosebush, and I think they are both good. I have kept you standing for quite a long time, and I want you to see proofs of these before we try any more."