“Tessa, will you write to me every week, child?”
“Every week,” promised Tessa, as she was drawn into the motherly arms and kissed again and again.
Her own mother would not kiss her like that. Was it her mother’s fault or her own?
As soon as they were seated in the carriage and the robe tucked in around her, her companion asked, “Shall we drive around the square? The sun is hardly set and the air is as warm as autumn.”
“Yes,” she answered almost under her breath. In a moment she spoke hurriedly, “Does your mother think—does she know—”
“She is a woman,” he answered abruptly.
“I wish—oh, I wish—” she hesitated, then added—“that she would not love me so much.”
“It is queer,” he said gravely.
They drove in silence through the town and turned into the “mountain road”; after half a mile, they were in the country with their faces towards the glimmer of light that the sunset had left.