The party dined in the long salon whose windows opened upon the terrace with its row of orange-trees. My Lady Marden careered in her conversation like a fat mare turned out to grass. My lord alone appeared inclined to keep step with her. After dinner there were wines and fruit: wines of Spain and Burgundy; peaches, nectarines, apricots, and grapes. After the fruit and wine, those who desired could steal a siesta, for the river air is fresh after rain, and mature appetites minister at the altar of Morpheus.
The two gentlemen were amusing themselves by making hot love to the younger Marden, and watching the expression of keen curiosity and chagrin on Mrs. Catharine Gore’s face. To be able to see so many suggestive things, and to hear nothing! What more tantalizing position for a duenna, and a spinster! John Gore could not keep back a smile as he watched the drama. He rose, and went and stood by Barbara’s chair with the quiet simplicity of a man who was not self-conscious.
“Do you remember the old place? I suppose you have been here—often—since I was last here.”
And that was all they said to each other for fully three minutes.
Probably their interest in glass houses, herb beds, and flowers was a wholly subordinate affair, yet it served the purpose of bringing two people together who desired to be near each other for very different reasons. John Gore may have thought the girl curiously reserved and silent. Yet he did not wish her otherwise, preferring her swarthy, pale-skinned aloofness to red-faced and commonplace good temper. Men who have seen the world have little use of people who let their insignificant souls bolt from their mouths like a mouse out of a hole. Hearts easily won are easily lost. The open field has no lure for the imagination; high walls and a mass of dusky trees pretend to hide all manner of mystery.
Neither of them referred to the brawl of the other night—Barbara, for reasons known to her own heart; John Gore, from a sense of delicacy and chivalrous understanding. He began to talk to her of the days when they had been mere children, and the subject served to sweep away some of the reserve that chilled the air between them.
They were in the fruit-garden, with its high, red-brick walls, when John Gore recalled to her an incident of their irresponsible youth.