He passed the letter to me: it was a business letter, addressed to him by his clerk. The nature of the business does not concern us; enough that the call was important and peremptory. The business, my husband said, would certainly detain him in Bath until the hour of the departure of a late train on the following night, if indeed he should be able to return then.
I packed his handbag, and Mary and I walked with him to the railway station. I kissed him, and we parted.
My sister and I returned home to take the children to the sands. We passed the morning under the cliffs, talking and reading and playing with the children. It was a bright day, but I afterwards remembered noticing that the blue of the heavens was wanting in the beautiful clear vividness of hue of the preceding days. The azure had a somewhat dim and soiled look, such as one might fancy it would exhibit in a very fine, thin dust-storm. I also afterwards remembered having observed that there was a certain brassiness in the glare of the sun, as if his light were the reflection of his own pure golden beams cast by a surface of burnished brass or copper. These things I afterwards recollected I had noticed, yet I do not remember that I spoke of them to my sister.
We dined at one o’clock. The road from our house to the sands carried us past the entrance to the pier. As we leisurely strolled, Bill Hitchens lifted his breast from the post which he was overhanging, and approached us with a respectful salutation of his hand to his brow.
‘Will you be going out this afternoon, lady?’ he asked.
‘My husband has been called away,’ I replied, ‘and I do not feel as if I should care to go upon the water during his absence.’
‘You will find the afternoon tedious, dear,’ said Mary.
‘It’s a beautiful day, lady,’ said the boatman. ‘There’s a nice little air o’ wind stirring. Couldn’t ask for a prettier day for a sail, lady.’
‘It is somewhat cloudy,’ said I, directing my gaze at the sky.