III
At breakfast the next morning the young man said: “I am going back to the city this morning, John.”
“Are you? When will you return?” said the gray-haired man. He did not think his honeymoon had waned yet; but it never shines very brightly on three people at once, and—
“I don’t know,” answered the young man. “I shall go to Jack Livingston’s first; I promised to spend a week or two with him. And then I think I’ll go to Maine. I am told the fishing is exceptionally good this season.”
She said nothing. The gray-haired man began to talk about the anxious cares of a floriculturist.
After breakfast she disappeared. The gray-haired man said good-bye to his younger brother, to whom he had been as a father, and went out to consult with his head gardener about a new variety of orchids which he had just received from the Isthmus of Panama.
All that morning the young man wondered if she would not bid him farewell. At last the groom came to tell him that the cart awaited him.
He was in the hallway, deliberating whether he should seek her, when she came down the stairs slowly. Her face wore a look it had never known before. Occasionally it is seen on some women when they wear the widow’s garb for the first time,—a blending of sorrow and yearning, and, withal, resignation. She halted at the foot of the stairs, her hand resting upon the carved post. “So you are going?” she said, monotonously.
“Yes.” His voice was low.
“For a long time?”