“Not at all,” she replied placidly, “but you surely do not want an argument?”
“Oh, no,” he answered her, vexed at himself.
“What do you think of Mrs. ———'s novel?” he suggested, as the pages, fluttering in the rising breeze, caught his attention.
“Mother is reading it, not I,” she returned indifferently. “I don't care very much for the new novels.”
Involuntarily he turned as if to catch her mother's criticism of the book: light, perhaps, but witty, and with a little tang of harmless satire that always took his fancy. But she was not there. He sighed impatiently; was it possible he was a little bored?
A quick step sounded on the gravel walk, a swish of skirts.
“It is Louise Morris,” she said, “I'll meet her at the gate.”
After a short conference she returned.
“Will you excuse me, please?” she said, quite eagerly for her. “Mother will be down soon, anyway, I am sure. Louise's brother is back; he has been away in the West for six years. Mother will be delighted—she was always so fond of Jack. Louise is making a little surprise for him. He must be quite grown up now. I'll go and tell mother.”
A moment later and she was gone. Mrs. Leroy took her place in the window, and imperceptibly under her gentle influence the cloud faded from his horizon; he forgot the doubt of an hour ago. At her suggestion he dined there, and found himself, as always when with his hostess, at his best. He felt that there was no hypocrisy in her interest in his ideas, and the ease with which he expressed them astonished him even while he delighted in it. Why could he not talk so with Jane? It occurred to him suddenly that it was because Jane herself talked rarely. She was, like him, a listener, for the most part. His mind, unusually alert and sensitive to-night, looked ahead to the happy winter evenings he had grown to count on so, and when, with an effort, he detached this third figure from the group to be so closely allied after Christmas-tide—the date fixed for the wedding—he perceived that there was a great gap in the picture, that the warmth and sparkle had suddenly gone. All the tenderness in the world could not disguise that flash of foresight.