t her temper, and never replied to any serious
criticism; she simply changed the subject, leaving you with your
disapproval on your hands.

In this Eliot's young subtlety misled him. Adeline Fielding's mind was
not the clever, calculating thing that, at fifteen, he thought it. Her
one simple idea was to be happy and, as a means to that end, to have
people happy about her. His father, or Anne's father, could have told
him that all her ideas were simple as feelings and impromptu. Impulse
moved her, one moment, to seize on the faithful, defiant little heart of
Anne, the next, to get up out of the sun. Anne's tears spoiled her
bright world; but not for long. Coolness was now the important thing,
not Anne and not Anne's mother. As for Eliot's disapproval, she was no
longer aware of it.

"Oh, to be cool, to be cool again! Thank you, my son."

Eliot had moved all the cushions down under the tree, scowling as he did
it, for he knew that when his mother was really cool he would have to
get up and move them back again.

With the perfect curve of a great supple animal, she turned and settled
in her lair, under her tree.

Presently, down the steps and across the lawn, Anne's father came
towards her, grave, handsome, and alone.

Handsome even after fifteen years of India. Handsomer than when he was
young. More distinguished. Eyes lighter in the sallowish bronze. She
liked his lean, eager, deerhound's face, ready to start off, sniffing
the trail. A little strained, leashed now, John's eagerness. But that
was how he used to come to her, with that look of being ready, as if
they could do things together.

She had tried to find his youth in Anne's face; but Anne's blackness and
whiteness were her mother's; her little nose was still soft and vague;
you couldn't tell what she would be like in five years' time. Still,
there was something; the same strange quality; the same
forward-springing grace.

Before he reached her, Adeline was smiling again. A smile of the
delicate, instinctive mouth, of the blue eyes shining between curled
lids, under dark eyebrows; of the innocent white nose; of the whole
soft, milk-white face. Even her sleek, dark hair smiled, shining. She
was conscious of her power to make him come to her, to make herself felt
through everything, even through his bereavement.

The subtle Eliot, looking over the terrace wall, observed her and
thought, "The mater's jolly pleased with herself. I wonder why."

It struck