“Three lumps, please.”
“Cream?”
“Cream, thank you.”
“Won’t you sit in the shade. It is such a glare out there in the sun.”
John Strong edged his chair under the tree, while Judith watched him, smiling out of her dark eyes. It was all very simple, yet very strange. She wondered what thoughts were working in her father’s brain.
Half an hour passed, smoothly enough, and then came the leave-taking. Joan, very pale and a little defiant for all her wistfulness, stood up and looked into John Strong’s face. The gray eyes and the blue ones met and challenged each other steadily. Judith was watching Joan as a mother watches a child taking the first step on the stair of fame. It was Joan’s instinct that triumphed in that moment. She went straight up to John Strong, put up her mouth to him to be kissed.
And John Strong kissed her.
“Thank you,” was all she said.
As for Gabriel’s father, he spoke never a word as he drove home with Judith towards Saltire. His daughter watched him, biding her time, wondering whether he were angry or not, and what would follow if his pride should prove too strong.
It was not till he had entered his own lodge gates that John Strong spoke to Judith of the woman he had met at the cottage.