As they drew nearer, she saw that the carriage contained two young, pretty, ladylike girls, one of whom was talking to Edward with much animation and earnestness, he listening with evident interest and amusement.
When the carriage had passed her, Zoe glided away through the shrubbery, gained the house by a circuitous route and a side entrance, and her own rooms by a back stairway.
She fully expected to find Edward there, but he was not.
"Where can he be?" she asked herself half aloud, then sat down and waited for him—not very patiently.
After some little time, which, to Zoe's impatience, seemed very long, she heard the opening and shutting of a door, then the voices of Mr. Dinsmore, his daughter, and Edward in conversation, as they came down the hall together.
"He has been to see his mother first," she pouted. "I think a man ought always to put his wife first." And turning her back to the door, she took up a book and made a pretence of being deeply interested in its perusal.
Edward's step, however, passed on into the dressing-room, and as she heard him moving about there, she grew more and more vexed. It seemed that he was in no great haste to greet her after this their first day's separation; he could put it off, not only for a visit to his mother in her private apartments, but also until he had gone through the somewhat lengthened duties of the toilet.
Well, she would show him that she, too, could wait—could be as cool and indifferent as himself. She assumed a graceful attitude in an easy-chair, her pretty little feet upon a velvet-cushioned stool, and with her book lying in her lap listened intently to every sound coming from the adjoining room.
At last she heard his step approach the door, then his hand upon the knob, when she instantly took up her book and fixed her eyes upon its open page, as though unconscious of everything but what was printed there, yet really not taking in the meaning of a single word.
Edward came in, came close to her side. Still she neither moved nor lifted her eyes. But she could not control her color, and he saw through her pretences.