“Is not this what we usually call the Indian summer? We have not had frost yet, I think,” she said easily.
His dark face crimsoned, he answered briefly, and dropped her hand.
If he had ever prided himself upon his tact, he was aware that to-day it would be a most miserable failure. How could he say, “You have misunderstood me,” when perhaps it was he who had misunderstood her? He had come to her to-day by sheer force of will, not daring to stay away longer—and what had he come for? To assure her—perhaps he did not intend to assure her any thing; perhaps it was not necessary to assure her any thing. Not very long ago he had assured her that he could become to her her “ideal of a friend,” if she would “show” him how. Poor Tessa! This showing him how was weary work. “Yes,” he replied, wheeling a chair nearer the open window, “the country is beautiful.”
That look about her flexible lips was telling its own story; she was just the woman, he reasoned, to break her heart about such a fellow as he was.
“I have very little time for any thing outside my work,” he said, running on with his mental comments. All a man had to do to make himself a hero was to let a woman like this fall in love with him.
“What have you been doing?” he asked in his tone of sincere interest.
“All my own doings,” she said lightly. “Mr. Hammerton and I have been writing a criticism upon a novel and comparing notes, and I have sewed, as all ladies do, and walked.”
“You are an English girl about walking.”
“I know every step of the way between Dunellen and Mayfield. Do you walk?”
“No, I drive. My life has a lack. My book is falling through. I do not find much in life.”