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Why was it that she was so melancholy to-night? She could have found it in her heart to have envied that fair woman who had gone away with the beautiful child by her side. Was Mrs. Verdon to have everything wealth, position, Jamie's love, and She sprang up suddenly from her chair in an agony of self-contempt and self-reproach.
Verdon, really touched by Elsie's feeling for the child. She talked on, pleasantly and fluently. It was evidently her fancy to make much of Miss Kilner and take possession of her. Elsie accepted the invitation to dinner, partly because Mrs. Verdon was really a very pleasant person, but chiefly because her heart still clung to Jamie.
Monsieur Verdon and some familiars of the house, whether friends or relations I do not know, were attending to this, and there was a hum of conversation around; but there was no acquaintance of ours present, and nobody ventured to speak to us, except that Clement said: 'She will be gratified, when she has time to understand. And then he asked whether I had heard anything of my brother.
But as he and his mother felt certain that amputation would be necessary, he had come to fetch me to take care of her. Fortunately for us, we had not to cross the Rue St. Antoine to enter the Maison Verdon, but Clement opened a small door into the court with a private key, presently knocking at a door and leading me in.
The breath of the warm summer wandered in, and she did not criticise the singing or the sermon. Through it all she could hear the distant bleating of flocks and the hum of bees. If she could always live a simple country life with Jamie, it would be full of calm content. But the boy would grow up and demand more than her slender means could provide; and he belonged to Mrs. Verdon.
"Jamie must be delighted to be here," she said after a little pause. "He is quite radiant," Arnold replied. "What lungs the boy has! I could hear him shouting as I walked up the lane to The Cedars yesterday afternoon." "So he has called on her already," Elsie thought. "Mrs. Verdon is afraid of the river," he went on.
So the two old ladies and the younger one came out into the lane, just in time to see the flutter of summer gowns on the meadow-path. The Danforths were ahead of them. Yes; and Mrs. Verdon, slim and cool and graceful in a dainty costume of blue-grey cashmere a dress which wrung unwilling admiration even from the rector's wife. "That straw-coloured woman dresses well," she said to Elsie.
An hour or two later, when Jamie, rosy and beautiful, was wrapped in the deep sweet sleep of childhood, Mrs. Verdon and her sister-in-law were sitting together after dinner. "What an eventful day you have had!" said Mrs. Tell, looking up from her knitting in the softly-shaded light. "And what a romantic meeting with Mr. Wayne! Is he all that the Danforths described?" "Of course not," replied Mrs.
For a whole year Arnold Wayne had listened to the praises of Katherine Verdon, chanted by his cousins the Danforths. They had found fault with him, as all his relations did, for leading an unsettled life, and were always asking when he was going to marry. He had been travelling for three or four years, associating with all sorts and conditions of men and women, interesting himself in strange religions, penetrating into regions which few Englishmen had ever visited, and he had reached the mature age of thirty-three without having been very deeply and seriously in love. Of course he had had love affairs. There was an Italian who had held him in her enchantments for a whole winter, not to mention a git
Her white dress, relieved only by touches of the palest green, became her very well. But she was restless, and Elsie saw that her eyes often glanced quickly and furtively in the direction of Francis Ryan. All the Danforths treated Elsie rather distantly, but they were devoted to Mrs. Verdon.
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