She had been standing at one of the hall windows, a window deep set in the brick wall, and commanding through elms and beeches the path to the tennis court.  Down this path Nina and Francesca Jay had recently disappeared, with their rackets, for some practice.  The sun was high, and the sky cloudless; under the trees there was a softly mottled pattern of light and shade.  Outside the window the hound was lying, his nose on his paws, his eyes shut.  Harriet remembered walking in such a summer wood, years and years ago, a little girl with yellow braids, holding tight to her mother’s hand.  They had sat down on the ground, and her mother and father had talked, and the little girl had lain on her back for what seemed hours, looking at the sky.

There seemed to be no time for idle walks and dreaming in the woods nowadays.  Harriet had been four years at Crownlands, and had looked out at this wood a thousand times, but she had never lost herself in it, or lain staring up through branches there.  She was always too busy:  the business of eating, and of amusing the others, and of keeping the machinery moving, had always absorbed her.  Personalities, microscopic buzzing of midges, had blotted out the beautiful arches and aisles; and if ever Harriet walked through the wood now, she was with chattering women; she was wondering if this one, or that one, or the other one, was hurt, or neglected, or piqued, was paired with the wrong person, or had really intended the meaning that might be read into a look or tone.

—­Hands pressed her eyes tight, and she came back to the present moment with a start.  Ward Carter was behind her.  He laughed at her confusion, and they sat down on the window seat together.  Yes, he was going back to the Bellamys’, and so was Blondin, but they had both come in just for lunch and the drive.  They had driven a hundred and twenty miles that morning, what?  And they were going to drive back that afternoon, what-what?  And how about eats, old dear?

Instantly he brought reassurance to her.  Ward was such a dear!  Of course she loved him.

“But you weren’t a very good boy last night!” she said.  Their hands were locked; but she had shaken a negative when he would have kissed her.  Bottomley was everywhere at once.

“Rotten!” he confessed, easily.  “I played poker, too.  No man ought to do that when he’s edged.  Sorry—­sorry—­sorry.  Bad, bad, bad little Edward!  I lost two hundred to Bates, a curse upon him.  But that was nothing; once, there, I was over twelve hundred in.  Listen.  When we’re married it’s all off.  No smoking, drinking, gambling, wine, women, or song, what?”

“You may not know it, but you never spoke a truer word!” the girl said.  His shout of laughter was pleasant to hear.

“Listen.  Does the Mater know it?  About us, I mean?”

“Oh, Ward—­nobody knows it!  Hush!” His mention of his mother brought back realization with a rush, and she added uncomfortably, “She’s at Great Barrington.”