hes and luxury to
point him to the charm of sex. She was always finished and graceful in
appearance, with the pretty woman's art of wearing her few plain dresses
as if they were many and varied; yet no one could think of her as
attaching much importance to the upholstery of life.... No, the man who
won her would be of a different type, have other inducements to
offer...and Amherst found himself wondering just what those inducements
would be.

Suddenly he remembered something his mother had said as he left the
house--something about a distinguished-looking young man who had called
to ask for Miss Brent. Mrs. Amherst, innocently inquisitive in small
matters, had followed her son into the hall to ask the parlour-maid if
the gentleman had left his name; and the parlour-maid had answered in
the negative. The young man was evidently not indigenous: all the social
units of Hanaford were intimately known to each other. He was a
stranger, therefore, presumably drawn there by the hope of seeing Miss
Brent. But if he knew that she was coming he must be intimately
acquainted with her movements.... The thought came to Amherst as an
unpleasant surprise. It showed him for the first time how little he knew
of Justine's personal life, of the ties she might have formed outside
the Lynbrook circle. After all, he had seen her chiefly not among her
own friends but among his wife's. Was it reasonable to suppose that a
creature of her keen individuality would be content to subsist on the
fringe of other existences? Somewhere, of course, she must have a centre
of her own, must be subject to influences of which he was wholly
ignorant. And since her departure from Lynbrook he had known even less
of her life. She had spent the previous winter with Mr. Langhope in New
York, where Amherst had seen her only on his rare visits to Cicely; and
Mr. Langhope, on going abroad for the summer, had established his
grand-daughter in a Bar Harbour cottage, where, save for two flying
visits from Mrs. Ansell, Miss Brent had reigned alone till his return in
September.

Very likely, Amherst reflected, the mysterious visitor was a Bar Harbour
acquaintance--no, more than an acquaintance: a friend. And as Mr.
Langhope's party had left Mount Desert but three days previously, the
arrival of the unknown at Hanaford showed a singular impatience to
rejoin Miss Brent.

As he reached this point in his meditations, Amherst found himself at
the street-corner where it was