Midway between breakfast and lunch, the
voices of children sang through the dining-room bright with the morning
sun. The children were going to the top of the mountain-the two
youngsters who made the life of Fabian and his wife so busy. Fabian was a
man of little speech. He was slim and dark and quiet, with a black
moustache and smoothly brushed hair, with a body lithe and composed, yet
with hands broad, strong, stubborn.
As Junia stood by the dining-room table and looked at the alert,
expectant children, she wished she also was going now to the
mountain-top. But that could not be--not yet. Carnac had sent a note
saying he wished to see her, and she had replied through Denzil that her
morning would be spent with her sister. "What is it?" she remarked to
herself. "What is it? There's nothing wrong. Yet I feel everything upside
down."
Her face turned slowly towards the wide mountain; it caught the light
upon the steeple of the Catholic chapel. She shuddered slightly, and an
expression came into her shadowed eyes not belonging to her personality,
which was always buoyant.
As she stood absorbed, her mind in a maze of perplexity, a sigh broke
from her lips. She suddenly had a conviction about Carnac; she felt his
coming might bring a crisis; that what he might say must influence her
whole life.
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