The Courting of Lady Jane | Page 5

quick step sounded on the gravel walk, a swish of skirts.
"It is Louise Morris," she said, "I'll meet her at the gate."
After a short conference she returned.
"Will you excuse me, please?" she said, quite eagerly for her. "Mother
will be down soon, anyway, I am sure. Louise's brother is back; he has
been away in the West for six years. Mother will be delighted--she was
always so fond of Jack. Louise is making a little surprise for him. He
must be quite grown up now. I'll go and tell mother."
A moment later and she was gone. Mrs. Leroy took her place in the
window, and imperceptibly under her gentle influence the cloud faded
from his horizon; he forgot the doubt of an hour ago. At her suggestion
he dined there, and found himself, as always when with his hostess, at
his best. He felt that there was no hypocrisy in her interest in his ideas,
and the ease with which he expressed them astonished him even while
he delighted in it. Why could he not talk so with Jane? It occurred to
him suddenly that it was because Jane herself talked rarely. She was,
like him, a listener, for the most part. His mind, unusually alert and
sensitive to-night, looked ahead to the happy winter evenings he had
grown to count on so, and when, with an effort, he detached this third
figure from the group to be so closely allied after Christmas-tide--the
date fixed for the wedding--he perceived that there was a great gap in

the picture, that the warmth and sparkle had suddenly gone. All the
tenderness in the world could not disguise that flash of foresight.
He grew quiet, lost in revery. She, following his mood, spoke less and
less; and when Jane returned, late at night, escorted by a tall, bronzed
young ranchman, she found them sitting in silence in a half-light,
staring into the late September fire on the hearth.
In the month that followed an imperceptible change crept over the three.
The older woman was much alone--variable as an April day, now
merry and caressing, now sombre and withdrawn. The girl clung to her
mother more closely, sat for long minutes holding her hand, threw
strange glances at her betrothed that would have startled him, so
different were they from her old, steady regard, had not his now
troubled sense of some impalpable mist that wrapped them all grown
stronger every day. He avoided sitting alone with her, wondering
sometimes at the ease with which such tête-à-têtes were dispensed with.
Then, struck with apprehension at his seeming neglect, he spent his
ingenuity in delicate attentions toward her, courtly thoughtfulness of
her tastes, beautiful gifts that provoked from her, in turn, all the little
intimacies and tender friendliness of their earlier intercourse.
At one of these tiny crises of mutual restoration, she, sitting alone with
him in the drawing-room, suddenly raised her eyes and looked steadily
at him.
"You care for me, then, very much?" she said earnestly. "You--you
would miss--if things were different? You really count on--on--our
marriage? Are you happy?"
A great remorse rose in him. Poor child--poor, young, unknowing
creature, that, after all, was only twenty-two! She felt it, then, the
strange mist that seemed to muffle his words and actions, to hold him
back. And she had given him so much!
He took her hands and drew her to him.
"My dear, dear child," he said gently, "forgive a selfish middle-aged

bachelor if he cannot come up to the precious ideals of the sweetest
girlhood in the world! I am no more worthy of you, Lady dear, than I
have ever been, but I have never felt more tender toward you, more
sensible of all you are giving me. I cannot pretend to the wild love of
the poets you read so much; that time, if it ever was, is past for me. I
am a plain, unromantic person, who takes and leaves a great deal for
granted--I thought you knew that. But you must never doubt--" He
paused a moment, and for the first time she interrupted him nervously.
"I never will--Clarence," she said almost solemnly; and it struck him
for the first time that she had never called him by his name before. He
leaned over her, and as in one of her rare concessions she lifted her face
up to him, he bent lower than her forehead; what compelled him to kiss
her soft cheek rather than her lips he did not know.
Unexpected business summoned him to New York for a fortnight the
next day, and the great city drew him irresistibly into its noisy
maelstrom. The current of his thoughts changed absolutely. Old friends
and new took up his leisure. His affairs, as they