Ancram grew silent as they drew near the main avenue and the real parting. The dusk had fallen suddenly, and a little wind brought showers of yellow leaves out of the shivering bamboos. They were quite alone, and at a short distance almost indistinguishable from the ixora bushes and the palmettos.
“Rhoda,” he said, stopping short, “this is our last walk together—we who were to have walked together always. May I kiss you?”
The girl hesitated for an instant. “No,” she said, with a nervous laugh: “not that. It would be like the resurrection of something that had never lived and never died!”
But she gave him her hand, and he kissed that, with some difficulty in determining whether he was grateful or aggrieved.
“It’s really very raw,” said Miss Daye, as they approached the others; “don’t you think you had better put on your hat?”
CHAPTER XI.
“Rhoda,” said Mrs. Daye, as her daughter entered the drawing-room next morning, “I have thought it all out, and have decided to ask them. Mrs. St. George quite agrees with me. She says, sound the Military Secretary first, and of course I will; but she thinks they are certain to accept. Afterward we’ll have the whole party photographed on the back verandah—I don’t see how they could get out of it—and that will be a souvenir for you, if you like.”
The girl sank into a deep easy chair and crossed her knees with deliberation. She was paler than usual; she could not deny a certain lassitude. As her mother spoke she put up her hand to hide an incipient yawn, and then turned her suffused eyes upon that lady, with the effect of granting a weary but necessary attention.
“You have decided to ask them?” she asked, with absent-minded interrogation. “Whom?”
“How ridiculous you are, Rhoda! The Viceroy and Lady Scansleigh, of course! As if there could be the slightest doubt about anybody else! You will want to know next what I intend to ask them to. I have never known a girl take so little interest in her own wedding.”