Dulcie came down and joined them in the library. Later Mrs. Barres and Lee appeared, and luncheon was announced.
Murtagh Skeel had not come to Foreland Farms, and there was no word from him.
Mrs. Barres spoke of his absence during luncheon, for Garry had told her he was coming to talk to Dulcie about her mother, whom he had known very well in Ireland.
Luncheon ended, and the cool north veranda became the popular rendezvous for the afternoon, and later for tea. People from Northbrook drove, rode, or motored up for a cheering cup, and a word or two of gossip. But Skeel did not come.
By half-past five the north veranda was thronged with a gaily chattering and very numerous throng from neighbouring estates. The lively gossip was of war, of the coming elections, of German activities, of the Gerhardts’ promised moonlight spectacle and dance, of Murtagh Skeel and the romantic interest he had aroused among Northbrook folk.
So many people were arriving or leaving and such a delightful and general informality reigned that Dulcie, momentarily disengaged from a vapid but persistent dialogue with a chuckle-headed but persistent youth, ventured to slip into the house, and through it to the garden in the faint hope that perhaps Murtagh Skeel might have avoided the tea-crush and had gone directly there.
But the rose arbour was empty; only the bubble of the little wall fountain and a robin’s evening melody broke the scented stillness of the late afternoon.
Her mind was full of Murtagh Skeel, her heart of 362 Garry Barres, as she stood there in that blossoming solitude, listening to the robin and the fountain, while her eyes wandered across flower-bed, pool, and clipped greensward, and beyond the garden wall to the hill where three pines stood silver-green against the sky.
Little by little the thought of Murtagh Skeel faded from her mind; fuller and fuller grew her heart with confused emotions new to her—emotions too perplexing, too deep, too powerful, perhaps, for her to understand—or to know how to resist or to endure. For the first vague sweetness of her thoughts had grown keen to the verge of pain—an exquisite spiritual tension which hurt her, bewildered her with the deep emotions it stirred.
To love, had been a phrase to her; a lover, a name. For beyond that childish, passionate adoration which Barres had evoked in her, and which to her meant friendship, nothing more subtly mature, more vital, had threatened her unawakened adolescence with any clearer comprehension of him or any deeper apprehension of herself.