The bright autumn sun threw
their figures into bold relief against the dark shadow of the verandah,
and I thought to myself they made a very pretty picture. I seemed to be
always seeing pictures, and my imagination was roused in a new
direction.
We rode away under the trees. My impression of the whole visit was
unsatisfactory. I had thought Mr. Currie Ghyrkins would be there, and
that I would be able to engage him in a political discussion. We could
have talked income-tax, and cotton duties, and Kabul by the hour, and
Miss Westonhaugh and Isaacs would have had a pleasant _tete-a-tete._
Instead of this I had been decidedly the unlucky third who destroys the
balance of so much pleasure in life, for I felt that Isaacs was not a
man to be embarrassed if left alone with a woman, or to embarrass her.
He was too full of tact, and his sensibilities were so fine that, with
his easy command of language, he must be agreeable _quand meme_; and
such an opportunity would have given him an easy lead away from the
athletic Kildare, whom I suspected strongly of being a rival for Miss
Westonhaugh's favour. There is an easy air of familiar proprietorship
about an Englishman in love that is not to be mistaken. It is a subtle
thing, and expresses itself neither in word nor deed in its earlier
stages of development; but it is there all the same, and the combination
of this possessive mood, with a certain shyness which often goes with
it, is amusing.
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