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Between the slightly overcrowded urns and statues there were bright dashes of color, here of dahlias in full bloom, there of reddening garlands of ampelopsis or Virginia creeper. It was what Mrs. Wappinger called an "off-day," otherwise she could not have had Diane at Waterwild.
"So she may be, dear; but I've spent too much money on Carli to wish to see him force his way into a family where he isn't wanted." This was the text of Mrs. Wappinger's discourse, not only on the present occasion, but on the subsequent "off-days," when Diane was induced to visit Waterwild. "Whatever is going on, Reggie Bradford's in it," she confided to Diane some few weeks later.
It would have taken a more weatherwise person than he to guess that behind this domestic calm the storm was brewing. The first intuition of threatening events came to Mrs. Wappinger. "I've seen nothing and heard nothing," she declared, in her emphatic way, to Diane, "but I know something is going on." That was in September. They sat in the shade of the cool flag-paved pergola at Waterwild, Mrs.
There were no more "off-days" at Waterwild, and Miss Lucilla's occasional letters from Newport ceased. Between her mother-in-law and herself, after a few painful attempts at intercourse, there had fallen an equally painful silence. Even her two or three pupils fell away. From the papers she learned that one or another of those for whom she cared was back in town again.
This theme admitting of little discussion, Diane did not pursue it, but she went away from Waterwild with a deepened sense of Derek's need of her, as well as of Dorothea's. She could so easily have helped them both that the enforced impotence was a new element in her pain.
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