He had strolled away, and had passed a dim halfhour by the side of Rosa Caffyn, who presented him to her mother, and her mother had asked him if he did not think Miss Wadhurst was looking extremely well, considering all that she had come through, poor thing! and she feared that a good many people would say that it was in rather doubtful taste for her to appear in a public place and not in mourning, though her husband had been dead scarcely more than two months; and he had replied that she had the doubtful taste to refrain from that form of etiquette known as hypocrisy; and Rosa had clapped her hands, crying "Bravo! That's what I have said all along."
His thoughts went over all the ground that he traversed during the day. It was when he was motoring to the Manor that he had made up his mind to mention her name to his mother, and she had replied to him. And what then?
That was the question which remained to be answered by himself to himself.
Why was he taking so much trouble to bring her and his mother together? Was it in order to give his mother the privilege of another acquaintance? or was he anxious to show Priscilla how charming a mother was his?
He had gone out upon the terrace with his cigar when his mother had left him, and now he sat in the long chair among some very well-disposed cushions. It was a night that lent itself with all the seductiveness of an English June, not to thought, but to feeling. One could feel the earth throbbing with the sensuousness of the season, although the stars of that summer night were but feebly palpitating out of the faint mystery of their grey-blue canopy. He had started thinking, but he was soon compelled to relinquish it in favour of feeling.
"If she were but sitting in that other chair--nay, why the other chair? Why should there not be only one chair between us?" He fancied her sitting where he sat, her head among the cushions--oh, that perfect head, with its glory of hair, shining like some of the embroidery of that satin cushion at his shoulder! He pulled up the pillow and put his cheek close to it. Oh, if only she were there! He would sit on the rest for her feet, and hold them in his hands and put his face down upon the arch of their instep. He had seen her feet that day when she had been watching the game, by the side of her friends, and he knew what they would be like to kiss. And then he would kneel by the side of the chair and put his head down to the cushion that was below hers, so that their faces--their lips--should not be far apart--not further apart than a finger's breadth--sometimes not even so far.