“Mrs. Flint is asleep,” she said.
“I am going out for a little while, Miss Oliver,” Victoria answered, and the nurse returned a gentle smile of understanding.
Victoria, descending the stairs, hastily pinned on a hat which she kept in the coat closet, and hurried across the lawn in the direction Mr. Flint had taken. Reaching the pine grove, thinned by a famous landscape architect, she paused involuntarily to wonder again at the ultramarine of Sawanec through the upright columns of the trunks under the high canopy of boughs. The grove was on a plateau, which was cut on the side nearest the mountain by the line of a gray stone wall, under which the land fell away sharply. Mr. Flint was seated on a bench, his hands clasped across his stick, and as she came softly over the carpet of the needles he did not hear her until she stood beside him.
“You didn't tell me that you were going for a walk,” she said reproachfully.
He started, and dropped his stick. She stooped quickly, picked it up for him, and settled herself at his side.
“I—I didn't expect to go, Victoria,” he answered.
“You see,” she said, “it's useless to try to slip away. I saw you from the balcony.”
“How's your mother feeling?” he asked.
“She's asleep. She seems better to me since she's come back to Fairview.”
Mr. Flint stared at the mountain with unseeing eyes.