The breakfast-room was sweet with flowers and fruit
and honey. Seaton's aunt was standing in the garden beside the open
French window, feeding a great flutter of birds. I watched her for a
moment, unseen. Her face was set in a deep reverie beneath the shadow
of a big loose sunhat. It was deeply lined, crooked, and, in a way I
can't describe, fixedly vacant and strange. I coughed, and she turned
at once with a prodigious smile to inquire how I had slept. And in that
mysterious way by which we learn each other's secret thoughts without a
sentence spoken I knew that she had followed every word and movement of
the night before, and was triumphing over my affected innocence and
ridiculing my friendly and too easy advances.
We returned to school, Seaton and I, lavishly laden, and by rail all
the way. I made no reference to the obscure talk we had had, and
resolutely refused to meet his eyes or to take up the hints he let
fall. I was relieved--and yet I was sorry--to be going back, and strode
on as fast as I could from the station, with Seaton almost trotting at
my heels.
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