The Courting of Lady Jane | Page 3

to the little
side porch, then to the lawn. They watched her as she paced slowly
away from them, a tall violet figure vivid against all the green.
"She is a dear girl, isn't she?" said her mother softly.
A sudden flood of delighted pride surged through the colonel's heart. If
only he might keep them happy and contented and--and his! He never
thought of them apart: no rose and bud on one stem were more
essentially together than they.
"She is too dear for one to be satisfied forever with even our charming
neighborliness," he answered gravely. "How long have we lived 'across
the street from each other,' as they say here, Mrs. Leroy?"
She did not raise her eyes from her white ruffles.
"It is just a year this month," she said.
"We are such good friends," he continued in his gentle, reserved voice,
"that I hesitate to break into such pleasant relations, even with the
chance of making us all happier, perhaps. But I cannot resist the
temptation. Could we not make one family, we three?"
A quick, warm color flooded her cheeks and forehead. She caught her
breath; her startled eyes met his with a lightning-swift flash of
something that moved him strangely.
"What do you mean, Colonel Driscoll?" she asked, low and quickly.
"I mean, could you give me your daughter--if she--at any time--could
think it possible?"
She drew a deep breath; the color seemed blown from her transparent
skin like a flame from a lamp. For a moment her head seemed to droop;
then she sat straight and moistened her lips, her eyes fixed level ahead.

"Lady?" she whispered, and he was sure that she thought the word was
spoken in her ordinary tone. "Lady?"
"I know--I realize perfectly that it is a presumption in me--at my
age--when I think of what she deserves. Oh, we won't speak of it again
if you feel that it would be wrong!"
"No, no, it is not that," she murmured. "I--I have always known that I
must lose her; but she--one is so selfish--she is all I have, you know!"
"But you would not lose her!" he cried eagerly. "You would only share
her with me, dear Mrs. Leroy! Do you think--could she--it is possible?"
"Lady is an unusual girl," she said evenly, but with something gone out
of her warm, gay voice. "She has never cared for young people. I know
that she admires you greatly. While I cannot deny that I should prefer
less difference than lies between your ages, it would be folly in me to
fail to recognize the desirability of the connection in every other way.
Whatever her decision--and the matter rests entirely with her--my
daughter and I are honored by your proposal, Colonel Driscoll."
She might have been reading a carefully prepared address: her eyes
never wavered from the wall in front--it was as if she saw her words
there.
"Then--then will you ask her?"
She stared at him now.
"You mean that you wish me to ask her to marry you?"
"Yes," he said simply. "She will feel freer in that way. You will know
as I should not, directly, if there is any chance. I can talk about it with
you more easily--somehow."
She shrugged her shoulders with a strange air of exhaustion; it was the
yielding of one too tired to argue.
"Very well," she breathed, "go now, and I will ask her. Come this

evening. You will excuse--"
She made a vague motion. The colonel pitied her tremendously in a
blind way. Was it all this to lose a daughter? How she loved her!
"Perhaps to-morrow morning," he suggested, but she shook her head
vehemently.
"No, to-night, to-night!" she cried. "Lady will know directly. Come
tonight!"
He went out a little depressed. Already a tiny cloud hung between them.
Suppose their pleasant waters had been troubled for worse than nothing?
Suddenly his case appeared hopeless to him. What folly--a man of his
years, and that fresh young creature with all her life before her! He
wondered that he could have dreamed of it; he wished the evening over
and the foolish mistake forgiven.
His sister was full of plans and dates, and her talk covered his almost
absolute silence. After dinner she retired again into packing, and he
strode through the dusk to the cottage; his had not been a training that
seeks to delay the inevitable.
The two women sat, as usual at this hour, on the porch. Their white
gowns shimmered against the dark honeysuckle-vine. He halted at the
steps and took off the old fatigue-cap he sometimes wore, standing
straight and tall before them.
Mrs. Leroy leaned back in her chair; the faintest possible gesture
indicated her daughter, who had risen and stood beside her.
"Colonel