Felicia held out her hand. "Are you with Aunt Kate? Have you been shooting? You haven't lost your way?"
Geoffrey, while she asked these questions, held her hand over the gate and, though as unperturbed as ever, seemed somewhat at a loss for an answer. Dropping her hand, his eyes went from her to the house, the garden and away to the hills.
"You are high up here," he observed. "No, I haven't lost my way. I knew this road led past you. Yes, I am with your aunt for the week-end. I have been shooting."
"It is rather good shooting, I believe. Uncle Cuthbert prides himself on it, I know."
"Very good," he answered, with still his vagueness.
"Well, won't you come in and have some tea?" Felicia suggested, since the pause that followed grew long, and it suddenly occurred to her that however inimical she and Mr. Daunt might be there was yet a lack of even conventional hospitality in this survey of him over a closed gate.
"Thank you," said Geoffrey, pushing open the gate and coming in, quite as if this, also, were what he had expected. As he walked beside her up the path he made no customary remark on the charms of house and garden--for the garden, with its Michaelmas-daisies and roses was still charming. His lack of aesthetic appreciation she had guessed, and in his quiet glance now was a business-like discrimination, as though he merely recognized a certain oddity and were classifying it. Geoffrey, meanwhile, was not wondering that he had come, for he had definitely intended coming, but was wondering a little what, exactly, he had intended in coming. To see Felicia Merrick. No further object was defined in his definite mind, where objects were clear-cut. He therefore turned from wonder and rested upon the attainment of his object, looking now at Felicia, observing the details of her dress--her blue serge frock, her narrow white lawn collar, the black bow under her chin--observing the curves of her thick hair, the freshness of her cheek--not as an artist would have done, with a keen consciousness of the picture they made, but with a very vivid feeling about their significance to himself. They meant that sense of charm; and, when her eyes were raised to his, there came that sense of sudden peace.