Caroline looked after him with a smile which gradually faded from her lips as the slight stimulation from without ceased to act. For beneath it all there was something inside, deep down within her, which was not to be touched by the influences of sea air or sunshine--something that watched anxiously and doggedly for one thing and would heed no other.
But the people came and went--came and went--until her knee ached with the clutch and her whole being with watching. . . . And still the one man she was looking for never put his broad-palmed, long-fingered hand on the iron bar or turned his heavy-featured face towards her little window.
She kept telling herself that she was tired after last night, so as to explain the ache, but her little, pale face was looking pinched in the light from the sea when Laura Temple paused at the barrier to say a few words. The two girls spoke to each other through the little window; one smiling, the other rather grave and reluctant. They talked a moment or two of trivial things--the weather, the Gala--but Caroline felt a queer animosity towards this pleasant, kind girl whose lover had kissed her the night before. Though she told her surface self that the kiss was only a "bit of fun" and meant nothing, that other self knew well enough that it had meant quite enough to constitute an injury to a bride who was to be married in less than three weeks' time.
She replied abruptly, turning over the leaves of her account book; irritated by this contradictory sense of being obliged to feel she had done an injury when she knew she really had not. So at last Laura thought she had a headache or something, and soon went on towards the Cottage.
Miss Ethel came to the door, and at once took Laura into the living-room. Mrs. Bradford sat as usual on an arm-chair, idle with a clear conscience, because of her great, successful effort in the past.
Laura greeted them both gaily, for she felt the world was an agreeable place that morning. "I received your message with an almond cake from the baker's. I do hope your news is something good, too," she said.
But Miss Ethel did not respond to the mild pleasantry. "Yes. I had to get the baker's boy to take a message, because I am not very well to-day, and Caroline declined to call round on her way to the promenade."