William Le Queux
Whoso Findeth a Wife
Published by Good Press, 2019
EAN 4064066157166
Table of Contents
Chapter Two.
“The Nook.”
When, a couple of hours later, we entered Mrs. Laing’s garden, the first person we encountered was the man I hated, Andrew Beck, in his ill-fitting dress clothes and broad, crumpled shirt-front, with its great diamond solitaire, lounging in a wicker chair at the river’s brink, smoking, and in solitude enjoying the glorious sunset that, reflecting upon the water, transformed it into a stream of rippling gold. “The Nook,” as Mrs. Laing’s house was called, was a charming old place facing the river at a little distance above Staines Bridge—long, low, completely covered with ivy and surrounded by a wide sweep of lawn that sloped down to the water’s edge, and a belt of old elms beneath the cool shade of which I had spent many delightfully lazy afternoons by the side of my well-beloved.
“Ah! Deedes,” exclaimed Beck, gaily, rising as we approached, “I was waiting for somebody to come. The ladies haven’t come down yet.”
“Have you seen them?” I asked.
“Not yet,” he replied; then turning to my friend Dudley, he began chaffing him about a young and wealthy widow he had rowed up to Windsor in our boat a few days before.
“We saw you, my boy. We saw you?” he laughed. “You were talking so confidentially as you passed, that Ella remarked that you were contemplating stepping into the dead man’s shoes.”
“No, no,” Dudley retorted good-humouredly. “No widows for me. She was merely left under my care for an hour or so, and I had to do the amicable. It’s really too bad of you all to jump to such rash conclusions.”
At that instant a soft, musical voice behind me uttered my name, and, turning, I met Ella, with a light wrap thrown about her shoulders, coming forward to me with outstretched hand. “Ah! Geoffrey, how are you?” she cried gaily, with joy in her brilliant, sparkling eyes. Then, as our hands clasped, she added in an undertone, “I knew you would come; I knew you would forgive.”
“I have not forgiven,” I answered, rather coldly, bending over her slim white hand.
“But I have committed no fault,” she said, pouting prettily.
“You have given me no satisfactory explanation.”
“Wait until after dinner. We will come out here together, where we can talk