The tenth was an ideal August day: deep blue sky, trees still
untarnished in the hardy northern air, and black shadows under the
trees. Rachel made herself ready before lunch, to which she came down
looking quite lovely, in blue as joyous as the sky's, to find her
husband as fully prepared, and not less becomingly attired, in a gray
frock-coat without a ripple on its surface. They looked critically at
each other for an instant, and then Steel said something pleasant, to
which Rachel made practically no reply. They ate their lunch in a
silence broken good-naturedly at intervals from one end of the table
only. Then the Woodgates arrived, to drive with them to Hornby, which
was some seven or eight miles away; and the Normanthorpe landau and pair
started with, the quartette shortly after three o'clock.
Morning, noon, and afternoon of this same tenth of August, Charles
Langholm, the minor novelist, never lifted his unkempt head from the old
bureau at which he worked, beside an open window overlooking his cottage
garden. A tumbler of his beloved roses stood in one corner of the
writing space, up to the cuts in MSS., and roses still ungathered peeped
above the window-sill and drooped from either side.
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