The sisters kissed each other in perfunctory manner, Ron shook hands,
and nodded vaguely in response to half a dozen injunctions and
reminders; then the travellers took their places in the cab, bending
forward to wave their adieux, looking extraordinarily alike the while--
young and eager and handsome, with the light of the summer sun reflected
in their happy eyes.
Agnes felt a little chill as she shut the door and walked back into the
quiet house. All the morning she had looked forward to the hours of
peace and quietness which would follow the departure of the two children
of the household; but now that the time had arrived she was conscious of
an unwonted feeling of depression. The sound of that last pitying,
"Poor old Agnes!" rang in her ears. Why "poor"? Why should Margot
speak of her as some one to be pitied? As her father's eldest unmarried
daughter and the mistress of the house, she was surely a person to be
approved and envied. And yet, recalling those two vivid, radiant faces,
Agnes dimly felt that there was something in life which Margot and Ron
had found, and she herself had missed.
"I don't understand!" she repeated to herself with wrinkled brows. A
vague depression hung over her spirits; she thought uneasily of her
years, and wondered if she were growing old, unconscious of the fact
that she had never yet succeeded in being young.