He tossed aside the dead cigarette in his hand and shivered. The breeze was growing as the day passed, a chill October breeze laden with the heavy, melancholy aroma of dying leaves. He arose and retraced his steps to the house.
[XII.]
Ethan drank the last drop of excellent black coffee in the tiny cup and swung his chair about so that he faced the cheerfully crackling logs in the library fire-place. He had enjoyed his dinner, and he began to feel delightfully restful and drowsy. The day spent in the open air, with the wind rushing past him, the hearty repast and now the dancing flames were all having their natural effect. He reached lazily for his cigarette case, his gaze travelling idly over the high mantel above him. Then his hand had dropped from his pocket and he was on his feet, peering intently at a small photograph tucked half out of sight behind one of the old Liverpool pitchers which flanked the clock. A moment after he had it in his hands and was bending over it in the glare of the light from the chandelier.
It was evidently an amateur production, but it was good for all that. And Ethan was troubling his head not at all as to its origin or its merits or defects. It was sufficient for him that it showed a small, graceful figure in white against a background of foliage, and that the eyes which looked straight into his from under the waving hair with its golden fillet were Hers. It was Clytie. One hand rested softly on a flower-clustered spray of azalea, one bare sandaled foot gleamed forth from under the straight white folds of the peplum and the lips were parted in a little startled smile. Ethan devoured it eagerly while his heart glowed and ached at once. He remembered telling her that he would like to see those pictures, and remembered her laughing response: “I’m afraid you never will!” And now he was looking at one of them after all! And he was still looking when the gardener entered with the replenished wood-basket.
“Where did this come from, Billings?” Ethan asked carelessly.
Billings set down his burden and crossed to the table. He was a small man, well toward sixty, with his weather-beaten face shrivelled into innumerable tiny, kindly wrinkles. In spite of his years, however, he showed no signs of the mental degeneration which his wife had feared. He came and looked near-sightedly at the card which Ethan held out.
“Why, sir, Lizzie came across that in one of the upstair rooms when she was cleaning up after the folks went away and she put it on the mantel here, thinking maybe it was valuable and they’d send back for it.”