Rucker, who did a good deal of this sort of thing, had been immensely interested; indeed, he and his wife and the tiny baby were established at Keyport with David now, so that his summer holidays and week-ends might be spent in the neighbourhood. He had submitted certain plans to Gabrielle in Los Angeles, and Gabrielle had wired her approval from Mexico City; now they were to commence building, but with some agitation on the part of Rucker, who made worried references to “moving the hollies,” and “saving those copper beeches and maples on the north front.”
“Mr. Rucker got those red tiles, John,” David said to-day to the foreman, “and they come fourteen inches square. So just give me an idea in a day or two how large that terrace is.”
“There’s Mr. Rucker now,” Etta said, disconsolately, as a Ford came in the service gate, and turned toward the barns. “No, it isn’t,” she added, peering.
They all looked in that direction as the car stopped, and a young woman jumped out, and dismissed it, and came toward them.
CHAPTER XXI
She was tall, and wearing a dark blue suit under a belted brown coat, a loose rich sable-skin about her shoulders. A blue hat, bright with cornflowers was pressed down over her sunny hair.
David’s heart gave a great plunge, raced, stopped short, and began to plunge again. It was really Gabrielle.
But she was so beautiful, she was so graceful and swift and young and radiant, as she came toward them, that David was incapable of speech, bereft of all emotion except the overpowering realization of what she meant to him.
The day became incredibly glorious, became spring indeed, when she put both her warm hands in his, and held him at arm’s-length, and looked at him, and then at the reconstruction, and the young green about her, with a great sigh of relief and joy that was half a sob.
Perhaps her own emotions were also unexpectedly overwhelming, for even while she laughed and greeted Etta and John and the dog with quite her usual gaiety, David noticed an occasional break in her eager voice and a film of tears in her shining eyes.