"After seven. I believe you've been asleep!" She laughed, and drawing
out her hat pins tossed her velvet hat on the sofa. She looked paler
than usual, but sparkling with an unwonted animation.
"I went to see Granny, and just as I was going away Ellen came in from
a walk; so I stayed and had a long talk with her. It was ages since
we'd had a real talk...." She had dropped into her usual armchair,
facing his, and was running her fingers through her rumpled hair. He
fancied she expected him to speak.
"A really good talk," she went on, smiling with what seemed to Archer
an unnatural vividness. "She was so dear--just like the old Ellen. I'm
afraid I haven't been fair to her lately. I've sometimes thought--"
Archer stood up and leaned against the mantelpiece, out of the radius
of the lamp.
"Yes, you've thought--?" he echoed as she paused.
"Well, perhaps I haven't judged her fairly. She's so different--at
least on the surface. She takes up such odd people--she seems to like
to make herself conspicuous. I suppose it's the life she's led in that
fast European society; no doubt we seem dreadfully dull to her. But I
don't want to judge her unfairly."
She paused again, a little breathless with the unwonted length of her
speech, and sat with her lips slightly parted and a deep blush on her
cheeks.
Archer, as he looked at her, was reminded of the glow which had
suffused her face in the Mission Garden at St. Augustine. He became
aware of the same obscure effort in her, the same reaching out toward
something beyond the usual range of her vision.
"She hates Ellen," he thought, "and she's trying to overcome the
feeling, and to get me to help her to overcome it."
The thought moved him, and for a moment he was on the point of breaking
the silence between them, and throwing himself on her mercy.
"You understand, don't you," she went on, "why the family have
sometimes been annoyed? We all did what we could for her at first; but
she never seemed to understand. And now this idea of going to see Mrs.
Beaufort, of going there in Granny's carriage! I'm afraid she's quite
alienated the van der Luydens ..."
"Ah," said Archer with an impatient laugh. The open door had closed
between them again.
"It's time to dress; we're dining out, aren't we?" he asked, moving
from the fire.
She rose also, but lingered near the hearth. As he walked past her she
moved forward impulsively, as though to detain him: their eyes met, and
he saw that hers were of the same swimming blue as when he had left her
to drive to Jersey City.
She flung her arms about his neck and pressed her cheek to his.
"You haven't kissed me today," she said in a whisper; and he felt her
tremble in his arms.