He said the
simplest thing he could think of.
"No. I'm wearing a very warm fur-lined cloak. It's very long, too. I
couldn't stay indoors. The house seemed so--so dead."
"Is there nobody with you?"
"Colonel Ashley went back to town before dinner. Papa wasn't quite so
well. He's trying to sleep. Will you sit down on the step, or go in and
bring out a chair? But perhaps you'll find it chilly. If so, we'll go
in."
She half rose, but he checked her. "Not at all. I like it here. It's one
of our wonderful, old-fashioned Octobers, isn't it? Besides, I've got an
overcoat."
He threw the coat over his shoulders, seating himself on the floor, with
his feet on the steps below him and his back to one of the fluted
Corinthian pilasters. The shadow was so deep on this side of the
house--the side remote from the approaching moonrise--that they could
see each other but dimly. Of the two she was the more visible, not only
because she was in white, but because of the light coming through the
open sitting-room behind her from the hail in the middle of the house.
In this faint glimmer he could see the pose of her figure in the deep
wicker arm-chair and the set of her neat head with its heavy coil of
hair.
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