“Haven’t you noticed it?” Sylvia said. “Ah, I do hope it’s true!”
They were in the downstairs sitting room, which had been darkened against the blazing heat of the day. All four of the young Flemings had been down on the rocks, by the sea, on a favourite bit of beach. But even there the day had been too hot for them, and now, at five, they had idled slowly toward the house, through a garden in which the sunlight lay in angry, blazing pools of brightness, between the unstirring thick leafage of the trees. There was no life in the air to-day, no life in the slow lip and rock of the sea. The girls had talked of a sea bath at twilight when the night might be shutting down with something like a break in the heat, but even that necessitated more effort than they cared to make. Dressing again, Gabrielle had protested, would reduce them to their former state of limp and sticky discomfort.
The sitting room was hot, and smelt of dust and upholstery and old books. Through the old-fashioned wooden blinds the sun sent dazzling slits of light, swimming with motes. There was a warm gloom here, like the gloom in a tropic cave.
Sylvia, whose rich dark beauty was enhanced by summer, and who was glowing like a rose despite tumbled hair and thin crumpled gown, came to stand at the window and look over David’s shoulder. Gabrielle and Tom, with the dog, had just walked down the drive, and disappeared in the direction of the stable. It had been Gabrielle’s extraordinary voice, heard outside, that had brought David to the window.
“You speak with feeling, Tom!” she had been saying.
The words had drifted in at the window, and David seemed still to hear them lingering, sweet and husky and amusedly maternal, in the air.
Of course, that was it. She would marry Tom.
The thought had never crossed his mind before; he seemed to know the fact now, and his heart and mind shrank away from it with utter unwillingness to believe. A month ago, poor as he was, he might have done anything——!
Now it was too late.
“I see him just as you see him, David,” Sylvia was saying. “A big, lax, good-natured sort of boastful boy, that’s what he is. But I don’t believe she sees him that way! And—if she could like him, it would be a wonderful marriage for her, wouldn’t it? Fancy that youngster as mistress here. And isn’t he exactly the sort of rather—well, what shall I say?—rather coarse, adoring man who would spoil a young and pretty wife?”