Lord Innistenne, strolling across the gardens, saw the two under the big beech tree—saw Esmé reading alone on the veranda.
He walked down to the river, where two long chairs were hidden in a nook of shrubs, a slight, brown-eyed woman sitting in one, sitting palpably waiting.
"Joan, would you do good works?" he said. "Let this day slip for it."
She looked up at him quickly.
"Come with me, use persuasion, get the Chauntsey child back to London to her mother. I'll drive her up."
Joan Blacker looked at the river, seen dimly through the trees, at the wall of shrubs about the hidden nook. They had not many days like this. Then wistfully she looked at Innistenne's strong, rugged face—a look with a shade of fear in it, the fear which must haunt each woman who has sold her birthright, purity, that what is so much to her may be mere pastime to the man she loves. Joan Blacker might have been moderately unhappy, moderately lonely all her life, if Innistenne had not come across her path.
"The dark Adonis is fitting arrows to his bow," said Innistenne. "He delights in the bringing to earth of foolish, half-fledged birdlings. We shall be back early, Joan. Come—help me."
She had counted on her morning; on a few hours of the talking women delight in, of tender memories referred to, of future plans discussed. But without a word she got up.
"She is very pretty, Fred." Joan Blacker stopped once, looked up at Innistenne.
"She may be," he said carelessly. "There is a brick wall named Joan built across my vision, you see."