Part 5 (2/2)
”I did. Oh, I'm used to bargaining,” he rejoined, proudly. ”I always could make the other fellow see what he'd lose by refusing my offers.
And I got her to take the matter under consideration. I heard somewhere that she was interested in some philanthropy. Well, money comes in handy in charity.” He grinned broadly at Mrs. Dinsmore.
At that moment her protege was extremely distasteful to the lady. But she was a philosopher where marriage was concerned, and she whole-heartedly hoped that her cousin Millicent would not dally too long with her opportunity and allow the matrimonial prize to escape.
She was sincerely fond of Millicent, and desired for her the best things in the world. She sometimes said so with touching earnestness.
”She told me”--Mr. Brockton stumbled slightly--”that there wasn't any one else.”
”There isn't. She has her train--she's enormously admired--but there is no one in whom she is sentimentally interested. And Aunt Jessie says it was so all the time they were in Europe.”
”Wasn't there ever?” he demanded.
”My dear Mr. Brockton, Millicent is twenty-nine, as you reminded her, and she's a normal woman! Of course there have been some ones--her music-master at fourteen, I dare say, and an actor at sixteen, and a young curate at eighteen--oh, of course I'm jesting. But I suppose she was somewhat like other girls. She was engaged at nineteen--and he must have been quite twenty-three! No, I should dismiss all jealousy of her past if I were you.”
”Engaged?”
Mrs. Dinsmore wondered suddenly if she had been wise, after all, to admit that widely known fact.
”Oh yes, a bread-and-b.u.t.ter engagement. My uncle was notoriously inadequate in all practical affairs; he was a scholar and something of a recluse and the most charming gentleman I ever saw, but a child in worldly matters,--a child! It ended, you see.”
”How did it end?”
”Oh, poor Will Hayter died.”
”Dead long?”
”Five or six years.”
”Well, I'm not afraid of dead men.” Brockton laughed in relief. Mrs.
Dinsmore did not point out to him from her more subtle knowledge that constancy to the unchanging dead is sometimes easier than constancy to the variable living. She was only too glad to have the inevitable disclosure made lightly and the truth dismissed without frightening off the desirable suitor. ”And certainly Miss Harned don't look as if, as if--”
”Any irremediable grief were gnawing at her damask cheeks?--”
”What's this about damask cheeks?” The question came along with a swirl of skirts from the great hall. ”Cousin Anna, don't hate me for keeping you so long. Mr. Brockton, I owe you a thousand apologies.”
Some of those who admitted Millicent Harned's charm declared that it lay in her voice. Always there sounded through its music the note of eagerness, with eagerness's underlying hint of pathos. Her tones were like her face, her motions, herself. Impulse, merriment, yearning, and the shadow of melancholy dwelt in her eyes and shaped her lips to sensitive curves. She was tall, and her motions were of a spontaneous grace, swifter and more changeful than most women's.
”You have been a disgracefully long time, Millicent,” her cousin answered her apology. ”But”--she looked at the beautifully gowned figure, the lovely, imaginative face, thereby, like a good showman, calling Mr. Brockton's attention to them--”we'll forgive you.”
”Oh, it wasn't primping that kept me. I stopped for a few minutes at the schoolroom door. Poor Lena! She seemed to be feeling the responsibilities of erudition terribly this morning. She showed me her botany slides with such an air! Do you know what genus has the _rostellum_, Anna?”
”No, I don't,” said Anna, shortly. ”And Lena's growing up a perfect young prig. I'll have to change governesses. Heaven knows what I'll draw next time! The last one had charm, but no learning, and mighty little intelligence. This one has no manner at all, and is of encyclopaedic information. A daughter's a terrible responsibility.”
”Isn't she?” Millicent's tone was one of affectionate raillery as she gathered her draperies about her in the automobile. The notion of Anna's responsibilities amused her; Anna was so untouched by them--as smooth-skinned, as slim and vivacious, as the forty-year-old mother of two boys entering college, a girl in the schoolroom and another in the nursery, as she had been as a _debutante_.
”Oh, you may make fun,” said Anna, snapping open the frothy thing she called a sunshade, ”but you don't know how I lie awake nights, shuddering lest Lena grow up a near-sighted girl with no color and serious views.”
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