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Page 80
Miss Austin, a tall, thin young woman clad in white muslin and wearing
also a prim expression with which her photographer had been struggling
for some time in vain, obeyed these directions to the letter. Her lips
in lines of order and discretion, her skirts hanging in perfect folds,
she advanced up the straggling path, the picture of maidenly composure.
The nearer she drew to the rosebush the more fixed became the look of
meeting a serious obstacle and overcoming it by sheer force of will.
Charlotte Ruston, standing by her camera focussed on the spot of path
beside the rosebush, drew a stifled, impatient breath. "I'm going to
scream at her in a minute," she thought, "or fall in a faint. I wonder
which would startle her out of herself most."
"Do you mind," she said aloud, "if I tell you how perfectly charming you
look?"
Miss Austin's lips tightened into a little set smile, more artificial
than ever. But just as she reached the rosebush a motor car rushed up the
street and came to a standstill before the gate in Charlotte's hedge. Out
of the car--a conspicuous affair of a strong yellow colour, and hitherto
unseen in the town--descended a figure in a dust-coat, a figure upon
which Miss Edith Austin had never set eyes before. Pausing by the
rosebush she looked toward the scene at the gate, and her face relaxed
into an expression of alert interest.
The camera clicked unnoticed. Quicker than a flash Charlotte had gone
through a series of motions and had made a second exposure, smiling
delightedly to herself.
"It's a gentleman to see you," called Miss Austin, softly, as the heavily
built figure in the dust-coat opened the gate and advanced up the path.
Miss Ruston made all secure about her camera, and turned to meet the full
and smiling gaze of the newcomer, standing, cap in hand, just behind
her. He was a man who might have been thirty or forty--it would not have
been easy for a stranger to tell which at first glance, for his fair hair
was thick upon his head, his face fresh and unwrinkled, and his eyes
bright. Yet about him was an air of having been encountering men and
things for a long time, and of understanding them pretty well.
"Mr. Brant!" Charlotte's tone was that of complete surprise.
"You were not expecting me?" He shook hands, gazing at her in undisguised
pleasure. He was not much taller than she, and the afternoon sun was at
his back, so he had the advantage.
"I certainly was not. How does it happen? A business journey?"
"A most luckily opportune one--for me. It brought me within a hundred
miles, and my descriptions to my friend of an interesting region did
the rest."
His eyes swerved to the figure of Miss Edith Austin, standing tensely by
the rosebush, an observer whose whole aspect denoted eager absorption in
the meeting before her. Charlotte presented him. Miss Austin expressed
herself as assured of his being a stranger to the town the moment her
eyes fell upon him.
"And a very dusty and disreputable one, I'm afraid," Mr. Brant declared.
"I should have stopped at some hotel and made myself presentable," he
explained to Charlotte, "if I had not been afraid I should lose a minute
out of the short time Van Schoonhoven agrees to leave me here."
Charlotte took him to the house and left him politely trying to converse
with her grandmother--at tremendous odds, for he was not a rival of Red
Pepper Burns in his fondness for old ladies, not to mention deaf ones.
The photographer returned to her sitter.
"I have several pictures of you now, Miss Austin," she said, "and I think
among them we shall find one you will like."
"But aren't you going to have one of this last pose?" Miss Austin
inquired, anxiously. "Of course, I know you have company now--"
"That doesn't matter. But I have two exposures, by the rosebush, and I
think they are both good. I have kept you standing for quite a long time,
and I want you to see proofs of these before we try any more."
"I haven't once known when you were taking me. I can't help feeling that
if you just let me know when you were going to take the picture I could
be better prepared."
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