She received this wholly as a tribute to her acuteness, and was
therefore proportionately gracious. "That's only because it's catching.
You've _made_ me sublime. You found me dense. You've affected me quite
as Mrs. Server has affected Mr. Long. I don't pretend I show it," she
added, "quite as much as he does."
"Because that would entail _my_ showing it as much as, by your
contention, _she_ does? Well, I confess," I declared, "I do feel
remarkably like that pair of lips. I feel drained--I feel dry!" Her
answer to this, with another toss of her head, was extravagant enough to
mean forgiveness--was that I was impertinent, and her action in support
of her charge was to move away from me, taking her course again to the
terrace, easily accessible from the room in which we had been talking.
She passed out of the window that opened to the ground, and I watched
her while, in the brighter light, she put up her pink parasol. She
walked a few paces, as if to look about her for a change of company, and
by this time had reached a flight of steps that descended to a lower
level. On observing that here, in the act to go down, she suddenly
paused, I knew she had been checked by something seen below and that
this was what made her turn the next moment to give me a look. I took it
as an invitation to rejoin her, and I perceived when I had done so what
had led her to appeal to me. We commanded from the point in question one
of the shady slopes of the park and in particular a spreading beech, the
trunk of which had been inclosed with a rustic circular bench, a
convenience that appeared to have offered, for the moment, a sense of
leafy luxury to a lady in pale blue. She leaned back, her figure
presented in profile and her head a little averted as if for talk with
some one on the other side of her, someone so placed as to be lost to
our view.
"There!" triumphed Mrs. Brissenden again--for the lady was unmistakably
Mrs. Server. Amusement was inevitable--the fact showed her as so
correctly described by the words to which I had twice had to listen. She
seemed really all over the place. "I thought you said," my companion
remarked, "that you had left her tucked away somewhere with M. de
Dreuil."
"Well," I returned after consideration, "that is obviously M. de
Dreuil."
"Are you so sure? I don't make out the person," my friend continued--"I
only see she's not alone. I understood you moreover that you had lately
left them in the house."
"They _were_ in the house, but there was nothing to keep them from
coming out. They've had plenty of time while we've talked; they must
have passed down by some of the other steps. Perhaps also," I added,
"it's another man."