'Yes—decidedly so,' she replied, with a side glance. 'Now please give me my fan, Jerry, and don't break it, as you so often do.'
CHAPTER VI.
'THE OLD, OLD STORY.'
On this afternoon Alison felt, with pleasant confidence, that she was 'looking her best,' dressed to perfection, and had been equal to the occasion. She wore a closely-fitting costume of lustreless black silk, edged everywhere with rare old white lace that had been her mother's; her hair appeared more golden than brown in the sunshine, while seeming to retain the latter in its silky coils.
Round her slender neck was a collarette of soft, filmy white lace, and in it was a Provence rose, which Lord Cadbury had not been slow to detect as one from his own bouquet, and gathered some hope therefrom, as Bevil Goring did from her wearing his rosebud.
As she stood in the deep bay of one of the old windows, with the full flood of the ruddy afternoon sun streaming upon her, she made a charming picture, and there Goring joined her, while the rest were all engaged in general conversation. He was already feeling that to be near her was happiness, and that to see her, even across a table, was a thousand degrees better than not seeing her at all.
And she—brief though their acquaintance was—had become conscious of a quicker beating of her pulse, an undefinable sense of pleasure pervading her whole form, a mantling of colour in her cheek when he approached or spoke to her. Little had as yet passed between them; but the tell-tale eyes had told much.
'What a wonderful vista of old beech-trees!' said Goring, referring to the view from the windows.
'And the distant village spire closes it so prettily,' she replied; 'but you cannot see it properly from this point—but from that little terrace.'
'May we step out?'