"No, thank you, I don't vault gates."
"Aren't you going to show anything? Good gracious, I should simply explode if I had to keep in things the way you do. Now, what's the matter? You look white all the same; whiter than you did ten minutes ago. Oh, if it was me, I couldn't keep still. I should roar like a wounded lion."
"But I am not a wounded lion, Augusta, dear."
Lilias laid her hand on her sister's shoulder.
"I am older than you," she continued, "and perhaps quieter. Life has made me quieter. We won't say anything about what you saw, Augusta. Perhaps none of us have such a burden to bear as Valentine."
"Now, Lilias, what stuff you talk. Oh, she's a humbug, and I hate her. There, I will say it, just for once. She took Gerald away, and now she wants to take Adrian from you. Oh, I know you're an angel—you'd bear anything, but I'm not quite a fool."
"They are coming; you must hush," said Lilias, putting her hand across her young sister's lips.
Augusta cast two wrathful eyes behind her, lightly vaulted back over the gate, and vanished from view round the first corner. Lilias opened the gate, and went slowly to meet the group who were coming down the dusty country road.
Valentine was in black, but not in widow's weeds. She had a shady hat over her clustering bright hair, and round this hat, the baby, little Gerry, had stuck quantities of leaves and grasses and what wild flowers his baby fingers could clutch. With one hand she was holding up her long dress; her other held a basket of primroses, and her face, bright now with color in the cheeks, laughter on the lips, and the fire of affection in the eyes, was raised to where her sturdy little son sat on Carr's broad shoulder.