That
slope made one side of the gorge through which the river ran, and,
looking down through the trees, she caught glimpses of water and a red
scar of rock on the other cliff.
The sound of a steamer's paddles threshing the water came to her
clearly, and the crying of the gulls was so familiar that she hardly
noticed it. And all the way she was thinking of Francis Sales, his
absurdity, his good looks and his distress; but in the permanence of
his distress, even in its sincerity, she did not much believe, for he
had failed to touch anything but her pity, and that failure seemed an
argument against the vehemence of his love. Yet she liked him, she had
always liked him since, as a little girl, she had been taken by her
stepsisters to a haymaking party at Sales Hall.
They had gone in a hired carriage, but one so smart and well-equipped
that it might have been their own, and she remembered the smell of the
leather seats warmed by the sun, the sound of the horse's hoofs and
the sight of Caroline and Sophia, extremely gay in their summer
muslins and shady hats, each holding a lace parasol to protect the
complexion already delicately touched up with powder and rouge. She
had been very proud of her stepsisters as she sat facing them and she
had decided to wear just such muslin dresses, just such hats, when she
grew up. Caroline was in pink with coral beads and a pink feather
drooping on her dark hair; and Sophia, very fair, with a freckle here
and there peeping, as though curious, through the powder, wore yellow
with a big-bowed sash.
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