His mother had been writing him her discoveries that his father, in wretched health and goaded by physical torment to furious play at the green tables of “high finance,” was losing steadily, swiftly, heavily.  But Ross read her letters as indifferently as he read Theresa’s appeals to him to come to Windrift.  It took a telegram—­“Matters much worse than I thought.  You must be here to talk with him before he begins business to-morrow”—­to shock him into the realization that he had been imperiling the future he was dreaming of and planning—­his and Del’s future.

On the way to the train he stopped at the Villa d’Orsay, saw her and Henrietta at the far end of Mrs. Dorsey’s famed white-and-gold garden.  Henrietta was in the pavilion reading.  A few yards away Adelaide, head bent and blue sunshade slowly turning as it rested on her shoulder, was strolling round the great flower-rimmed, lily-strewn outer basin of Mrs. Dorsey’s famed fountain, the school of crimson fish, like a streak of fire in the water, following her.  When she saw him coming toward them in traveling suit, instead of the white serge he always wore on such days as was that, she knew he was going away—­a fortunate forewarning, for she thus had time to force a less telltale expression before he announced the reason for his call.  “But,” he added, “I’ll be back in a few days—­a very few.”

“Oh!” was all Del said; but her tone of relief, her sudden brightening, were more significant than any words could have been.

Henrietta now joined them.  “You take the afternoon express?” said she.

Ross could not conceal how severe a test of his civility this interruption was.  “Yes,” said he.  “My trap is in front of the house.”

There he colored before Henrietta’s expression, a mingling of amusement, indignation, and contempt, a caustic comment upon his disregard of the effect of such indiscretion upon a Saint X young married woman’s reputation.  “Then,” said she, looking straight and significantly at him, “you’ll be able to drop me at my house on the way.”

“Certainly,” was his prompt assent.  When Saint X’s morality police should see him leaving the grounds with her, they would be silenced as to this particular occurrence at least.  After a few minutes of awkward commonplaces, he and Henrietta went up the lawns, leaving Del there.  At the last point from which the end of the garden could be seen, he dropped behind, turned, saw her in exactly the same position, the fountain and the water lilies before her, the center and climax of those stretches of white-and-gold blossoms.  The sunshade rested lightly upon her shoulder, and its azure concave made a harmonious background for her small, graceful head with the airily plumed hat set so becomingly upon those waves of dead-gold hair.  He waved to her; but she made no sign of having seen.

When Henrietta returned, Adelaide had resumed her reverie and her slow march round the fountain.  Henrietta watched with a quizzical expression for some time before saying:  “If I hadn’t discouraged him, I believe he’d have blurted it all out to me—­all he came to say to you.”