When she was dressed in her habit she went out to the lawn's edge where Langly and the horses had already gathered: he put her up, and they cantered away down the wooded road that led to South Linden.
After their first gallop they slowed to a walk on the farther hill slope, chatting of inconsequential things; and it seemed to her that he was in unusually good spirits—almost gay for him—and his short dry laugh rang out once or twice, which was more than she had heard from him in a week.
From moment to moment she glanced sideways at him, curiously inspecting the sleek-headed symmetry of the man, noticing, as always, his perfectly groomed figure, his narrow head and the well-cut lines of the face and jaw. Once she had seen him—the very first time she had ever met him at Miami—eating a broiled lobster. And somehow his healthy appetite, the clean incision of his sun-bronzed jaw and the working muscles, chewing and swallowing, fascinated her; and she never saw him but she thought of him eating vigorously aboard the Yulan.
"Langly," she said, "is it going to be disagreeable for you when Mrs. Ledwith returns to South Linden?"
He looked at her leisurely, eyes, as always, slightly protruding:
"Why?"
"The newspapers."
"Probably," he said.
"Then—what are you going to do about it?"
"About what?"