outward
warmth than he had even shown his father. Alston Choate had walked in
with a simple directness as though he were there daily, and Anne
impulsively went forward to him. She felt she knew him very well. They
were quite friends. Alston, smiling at her and taking her hand on the
way to the colonel and Jeff, seemed to recognise that, and greeted her
less formally than the others. The colonel was moved at seeing him. The
Choates were among the best of local lineage, men and women
distinguished by clear rigidities of conduct. Their friendship was a
promissory note, bound to be honoured to the full. Lydia was for some
reason abashed, and Jeff, both she and Anne thought, not adequately
welcoming. But how could he be, Anne considered. He was in a position of
unique loneliness. He lacked fellowship. Nobody but Alston, in their
stratum at least, had come in person. No wonder he looked warily, lest
he assume too much.

Before they settled down, the elderly lady, with a thud of feet softly
shod, walked through the hall and stood at the library door regarding
them benignantly. And then Jeff, with an outspoken sound of pleasure and
surprise, got up and drew her in, and Choate smiled upon her as if she
were delightfully unlike anybody else. The colonel, with a quick, moved
look, just said her name:

"Amabel!"

She gave warm, quick grasps from a firm hand, gave them all round, not
seeming to know she hadn't met Anne and Lydia, and at once took off her
bonnet. It had strings and altogether belonged to an epoch at least
twenty years away. The bonnet she "laid aside" on a table with a certain
absent care, as ladies were accustomed to treat bonnets before they got
into the way of jabbing them with pins. Then she sat down, earnestly
solicitous and attentive as at a consultation. Anne thought she was the
most beautiful person she had ever seen. It was a pity Miss Amabel
Bracebridge could not have known that impetuous verdict. It would have
brought her a surprised, spontaneous laugh: nothing could have convinced
her it was not delicious foolery. She was tall and broad and heavy. When
she stood in the doorway, she seemed to fill it. Now that she sat in the
chair, she filled that, a soft, stout woman with great shoulders and a
benign face, a troubled face, as if she were used to soothing ills, yet
found for them no adequate recompense. Her dark grey dress was buttoned
in front, after the fashion of a time long past. It was so archaic i