the other side of her
dress? It must be Lord Lutley."

Mrs. Brissenden looked and mused. "A brown shoe in a white gaiter?" At
this moment Mrs. Server moved, and the next--as if it were time for
another pounce--she had got up. We could, however, still distinguish but
a shoulder and an out-stretched leg of her gentleman, who, on her
movement, appeared, as in protest, to have affirmed by an emphatic shift
of his seat his preference for their remaining as they were. This
carried him further round the tree. We thus lost him, but she stood
there while we waited, evidently exhorting him; after a minute of which
she came away as in confidence that he would follow. During this
process, with a face more visible, she had looked as charming as a
pretty woman almost always does in rising eloquent before the apathetic
male. She hadn't yet noticed us, but something in her attitude and
manner particularly spoke to me. There were implications in it to which
I couldn't be blind, and I felt how my neighbour also would have caught
them and been confirmed in her certitude. In fact I felt the breath of
her confirmation in another elated "There!"--in a "Look at her _now_!"
Incontestably, while not yet aware of us, Mrs. Server confessed with
every turn of her head to a part in a relation. It stuck out of her, her
part in a relation; it hung before us, her part in a relation; it was
large to us beyond the breadth of the glade. And since, off her guard,
she so let us have it, with whom in the world could the relation--so
much of one as that--be but with Gilbert Long? The question was not
settled till she had come on some distance; then the producer of our
tension, emerging and coming after her, offered himself to our united,
to our confounded, anxiety once more as poor Briss.

That we should have been confounded was doubtless but a proof of the
impression--the singular assurance of intimacy borne toward us on the
soft summer air--that we had, however delusively, received. I should
myself have been as ready as my neighbour to say "Whoever he is, they're
in deep!"--and on grounds, moreover, quite as recklessly, as
fantastically constructive as hers. There was nothing to explain our
impression but the fact of our already having seen them figure together,
and of this we needed breathing-time to give them the natural benefit.
It was not indeed as an absolute benefit for either that Grace
Brissenden's tone marked our recognition. "Dear Guy _again_?"-