Part 20 (1/2)

But I had no time to say another word to him, as I turned to greet Mrs.

Marshall.

He mumbled something, flus.h.i.+ng, while his eyes devoured my beauty in one dumb, wors.h.i.+pping look. Then he dropped quickly out of our group. I was sorry, but he'll understand that I was flurried. He ought to learn self- control, though; he shouldn't look at me before so many people with all his heart in his eyes.

And I was so vexed about his clothes, too! His old, long, black coat, such as lawyers wear in the West, would have been pretty nearly right-- something like what the other men wore--but he seemed to think it was not good enough, and had put on a brand new business suit. Of course there wasn't another man there so clad, but he never seemed to notice how absurd he was.

The Viewing of the Pack didn't last long. Before my cheeks had ceased flaming, before I had grown used to standing there to be looked at, people seemed to go, all at once, as suddenly as they had arrived.

Just as the last ones were leaving, some instinct told me that Mr. Hynes had come. Before I saw him, I felt his gaze upon me, a wondering, glad look, as if I were Eve, the first and only woman.

Milly brought him to me and left us together, but at first he was almost curt in his effort to hide his sensibility to my beauty--as if that were a weakness!--and I was furiously shy, and felt somehow that I must hold him at still greater distance.

”Am I never again to hear you sing?” he asked. ”Sweet sounds that have given a new definition to music are still vibrating in my memory.”

I knew he was thinking of Christmas!

”I don't often sing, except for Joy,” I mumbled; ”I've had so few lessons.”

”Joy doesn't know her joys; but--wouldn't she share them?”

”Sometime--perhaps--”

I couldn't answer him, for hot and cold waves of shyness and pleasure were running over me. Oh, I hope, for Milly's sake, he doesn't dislike me. He seems to feel so intensely, to be so alive!

When he had gone, I went to the dining-room with Aunt Marcia, and found there Ethel and the General and Peggy Van Dam, the General's cousin, a pale girl, all eyes and teeth. Kitty was with them, and she darted towards me, but Mrs. Van Dam was before her.

”Sit down, both of you,” she commanded.

She fairly put us into chairs, and brought us cups of something--I don't know what.

Aunt Marcia breathed a little sigh of relief.

”Helen,” she said, ”you haven't been standing too long?”

”It wasn't an instant! I could stand all day!”

Mrs. Van Dam smiled, and I felt _gauche_, like a schoolgirl. I am so impulsive!

”It was all delightful!” cried Kitty; ”and yet--while you were my chum, Helen, I _did_ think you rather good-looking!”

”You find yourself mistaken?” the General inquired.

”Oh, no-o-o; not exactly; a beautiful girl, certainly; but--oh, I could have made pincus.h.i.+ons of some of those pudgy women, nibbling wafers, and delivering themselves of lukewarm appreciations! 'Too tall'--'too short'-- 'too dark'--'too light'; 'I like your height bettah, my deah.' Helen, you dairymaid, powder! Plaster over that 'essentially improbable' colour.”

Mrs. Van Dam broke out laughing at Kitty's mimicry. I wish the child wouldn't let her hair straggle in front of her ears and look so harum- scarum.

”I doubt if we have had many harsh critics,” said Miss Baker.