He had told her his ambitions,
she had told him her aspirations. Some one had sung in the garden and there
had been one wonderful moment when Peter had touched her hand and she had
not taken it away. At last they were both silent and the garden flowed
about them, on every side of them, with the notes and threads that can only
be heard at night.
Mrs. Rossiter, heavily and solemnly, brought her daughter a shawl. There
was some one to whom she would like to introduce Mr. Westcott. Would he
mind? Eden was robbed of its glories....
But he had had enough. He thought at one moment that already she was
beginning to care for him, and at another, that a lover's fancy made signs
out of the wind and portents out of the running water.
But he was happy with a mighty exultation, and then, as he turned down on
to the Embankment and felt the breeze from the river as it came towards
him, he met Henry Galleon.
The old man, in an enormous hat that was like a top hat only round at the
brim and brown in colour, was trotting home. He saw Peter and stopped. He
spoke to him in his slow tremendous voice and the words seemed to go on
after they had left him, rolling along the Embankment.
"I am glad to see you, Mr. Westcott. I have thought that I would like to
have a chat with you. I have just finished your book."
This was indeed tremendous--that Henry Galleon should have read "Reuben
Hallard.
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