“‘In the spring a young man’s fancy—’”
laughingly quoted one of them.
“Will she accept or refuse him?” asked the other.
“If she do either it will be once and forever,” was the reply seriously given. “Did you notice her mouth? She has been very much troubled, but she can be made very glad.”
After the carriage had passed, Mr. Hammerton spoke, “I am glad we amused those people; they failed to decide whether or not we are lovers.”
“They have very little penetration, then,” said Tessa. “I am too languid and you are too unconscious.”
“There is nothing further to be said; you do not know what you have nipped in the bud.”
“I suppose we never know that.”
Dinah met them at the gate, her wind-blown curls and laughing eyes in striking contrast to the older face that had lost all its color. Tessa did not see that Mr. Hammerton’s eyes were studying the change in her face; she had no more care of the changes in her face with him than with Dinah.
“I’ll be in about eight,” he said to Dinah, as Tessa brushed past him to enter the gate.