With entire unexpectedness Marsh answered fiercely from the other side, “They don’t love her!  They’re not capable of it!”

Marise started, as though a charged electric wire had fallen across her arm.  Why was there so often a note of anger in his voice?

For a moment they advanced silently, pacing forward, side by side, unseen but not unfelt by each of the others.

The road turned now and they were before the little house, every window alight, the great pine somber and high before it.  The children and Toucle were waiting at the door.  They all went in together, shaking hands with the mistress of the house, neatly dressed, with a clean, white flounced apron.  “Nelly’s garment of ceremony!” thought Marise.

Nelly acknowledged, with a graceful, silent inclination of her shining blonde head, the presence of the two strangers whom Marise presented to her.  What an inscrutable fascination Nelly’s silence gave to her!  You never knew what strange thoughts were going on behind that proud taciturnity.  She showed the guests to chairs, of which a great many, mostly already filled, stood about the center table, on which sprawled the great, spiny, unlovely plant.  Marise sat down, taking little Mark on her knees.  Elly leaned against her.  Paul sat close beside old Mr. Welles.  Their eyes were on the big pink bud enthroned in the uncomeliness of the shapeless leafpads.

“Oh!” said Elly, under her breath, “it’s not open yet!  We’re going to see it open, this time!” She stared at it, her lips parted.  Her mother looked at her, tenderly aware that the child was storing away an impression to last her life long.  Dear, strangely compounded little Elly, with her mysticism, and her greediness and her love of beauty all jumbled together!  A neighbor leaned from her chair to say to Mrs. Crittenden, “Warm for this time of year, ain’t it?” And another remarked, looking at Mark’s little trousers, “That material come out real good, didn’t it?  I made up what I got of it, into a dress for Pearl.”  They both spoke in low tones, but constrained or sepulchral, for they smiled and nodded as though they had meant something else and deeper than what they had said.  They looked with a kindly expression for moment at the Crittenden children and then turned back to their gaze on the flower-bud.

Nelly Powers, walking with a singular lightness for so tall a woman, ushered in another group of visitors—­a tall, unshaven farmer, his wife, three little children clumping in on shapeless cow-hide boots, and a baby, fast asleep, its round bonneted head tucked in the hollow of its mother’s gingham-clad shoulder.  They sat down, nodding silent greetings to the other neighbors.  In turning to salute them, Marise caught a glimpse of Mr. Marsh, fixing his brilliant scrutiny first on one and then on another of the company.  At that moment he was gazing at Nelly Powers, “taking her in” thought Marise, from her beautiful hair to those preposterously high-heeled shoes she always would wear on her shapely feet.  His face was impassive.  When he looked neutral like that, the curious irregularity of his features came out strongly.  He looked like that bust of Julius Caesar, the bumpy, big-nosed, strong-chinned one, all but that thick, closely cut, low-growing head of dark hair.