Part 5 (1/2)
Lizzie Graham took it, and stood stock-still for one hard moment....
Then she led him down-stairs, out upon the porch, past the loafers gaping and nudging each other.
”Goin' to be married, after all, Mis' Graham?” some one said.
And Lizzie Graham turned and faced them. ”No,” she said, calmly.
Then they went out into the suns.h.i.+ne together.
”AND ANGELS CAME--”
BY ANNE O'HAGAN
The full effulgence of cloudless midsummer enveloped the place. The lawns, bright and soft, sloped for half a mile to the sweetbrier hedge. Among them wound the drive, now and again crossing the stone bridges of the small, curving lake which gave the estate its affected name--Lakeholm. To the left of the house a coppice of bronze beeches shone with dark l.u.s.tre; clumps of rhododendrons enlivened the green with splashes of color. Lombardy poplars, with their gibbetlike erectness, bordered the roads and intersected them with mathematical shadows; here and there rose a feathery elm or a maple of wide-branched beauty. To the right, a shallow fall of terraces led to the Italian garden, Mrs. Dinsmore's chief pride, now a glory of matched and patterned color and a dazzle of spray from marble basins.
Beyond all the careful, exotic beauty of the place, the wide valley dipped away, alternate meadow and grove, until it met the silvery s.h.i.+ver of willows marking the course of the river. Beyond that again, the hills, solemn in unbroken green, rose to cloud-touched heights.
Before the house Brockton's new automobile waited. He himself leaned against a stone pillar of the piazza, facing his hostess, who sat on the edge of a chair in the tense att.i.tude of protest against delay.
She had scarcely recovered from her waking crossness yet, and found herself more irritated than amused at the eccentricities of her guest.
She was wondering with unusual asperity why a man with such lack-l.u.s.tre blue eyes dared to wear a tie of such brilliant contrast.
He interrupted her musings.
”Miss Harned seems mighty stand-offish these days.”
”Millicent is a little difficult,” admitted Millicent's cousin.
”What do you suppose it is? She seemed all smooth enough in New York last winter, and even in the spring after--But now--” He paused again without finis.h.i.+ng his sentence. ”And I had counted on your influence to make her more approachable.”
”Oh, Millicent is having a struggle with her better nature, that is all,” laughed Mrs. Dinsmore. ”It's hard living with her during the process, but she's adorable once her n.o.ble impulses have been vanquished and she's comfortably like the rest of the world again.”
”I don't know what you mean,” said the downright Mr. Brockton.
”No?” Mrs. Dinsmore was sure that the impertinence of her monosyllable would be lost upon her elderly protege. ”I'll make it clear to you, if I can. Millicent, you know, has nothing--”
”With that figure and that face?” interrupted Brockton, with gallant enthusiasm.
”I was speaking in your terms, Mr. Brockton,” said the lady, with suave hauteur. ”Of course all of us count my cousin's charm and accomplishments, though we do not inventory them as possessions far above rubies. But in the valuation of the 'change she has nothing. Oh, she may manage to extract five or six hundred a year from some investments of my uncle, and she has the old Harned place in New Hamps.h.i.+re. That might bring in as much as seven hundred dollars if the abandoned farm-fever were still on--”
”By ginger!” boasted Brockton, whose expletives lacked _ton_, ”it's more than I had when I started.”
”So I remember your saying before. But I fear that my cousin is not a financial genius. What I meant by her struggles with her better nature is that she sometimes tries to thwart us when we want to make things easy for her. Her better nature had a fearful tussle with her common sense about five years ago, when Aunt Jessie asked her to go abroad; and it nearly overcame her frivolity and her vanity last winter when I met her at the dock and insisted upon having her spend the winter with me, and our second cousin, Alicia Broome, offered to be responsible for her wardrobe. But, thanks be,” she added, laughing, ”the world, the flesh, and the devil won. So cheer up, Mr. Brockton. It may happen again.”
”Oh, I'm not hopeless by any manner of means. I want her pretty badly, and I'm used to getting what I want. I told her, out and out, when she turned me down, back there in May, that if she were a young girl I wouldn't urge her any more, after what she said about her feelings.
But she wasn't, and I thought she could look at a proposition from a plain business point of view.”
”You told her that? You mentioned to her that she was no longer a young girl?” Mrs. Dinsmore's laugh rippled delightedly on the air.