Part 17 (1/2)
Indeed, she was so engrossed that she gave quite a start when her companion, after watching her in silence for some minutes, remarked quietly:
”I'd give something to know what you are thinking of, Miss Adair.”
”Why! the group down there, of course,” she answered. ”They look so pretty, don't they, in evening dress, with the big old hall for background and the firelight on their faces?”
”Yes,” quietly, ”but personally I can find a still more pleasing picture close at hand.”
”Oh, the moonlight!” with a gesture of impatience. ”It's making you look quite sentimental. Please don't give way to it, though, because if so, I shall be obliged, to give up this comfortable chair and go to the hall. I can't bear sentimental people; they irritate me frightfully.”
The man smiled a little in the shadow, and the look of innate strength and resoluteness of purpose deepened on his face. There was that in Ted Masterman's eyes to-night, as from the vantage ground of shadow, they jested unceasingly on Paddy's face, which suggested a preparation for a struggle in which he meant to win.
How long or how short seemed a matter of little importance just then; for one instinctively saw in him the steady perseverance of the man who knows how to wait.
And it is generally to such the victory is given; for greater than the power of riches, or learning, is the power of knowing how to wait.
Ever since Ted Masterman helped a drenched, dripping figure of a girl into his little sailing yacht, and met that frank face that ended in laughter, in spite of her sorry plight, he had known himself her slave, and that henceforth the purpose of his life would be to win her. If the winning was to be hard, and suffering entailed, he was prepared to face it, because he knew that Paddy was worth the cost, whatever it proved, from the first time that he saw her in her own home.
His keen eyes noted instantly that the charm and brightness, which made her so popular abroad, were just as freely lavished upon her own circle, and that if she were beloved by her outside friends, she was yet more beloved and idolised there.
Then, when he found her perfectly indifferent to his attentions, the spirit of conquest was roused within him tenfold, and he loved her yet more for her airy independence.
He half guessed her feeling for Jack O'Hara; but Jack's devotion to Eileen had recently become so plaint to all except Eileen herself, that he did not let it trouble him. In this he was wrong, for Paddy was, before all thing, staunch, and having given her affections, she would not easily change.
”I'm not getting sentimental at all,” he replied. ”I know better, for I don't want to have my head bitten off my last evening.”
Paddy smiled, and was mollified.
”It's awfully silly, isn't it?” she said. ”I hate anything sentimental.
I like people who call a spade a spade.”
”And I wonder what you like them to call love?” he suggested.
”Oh, 'love,' I suppose, only they needn't look like sick sheep over it, and prefix half a dozen idiotic adjectives.”
”I thought perhaps the mere word was too sentimental,” with a little smile, ”and you would prefer to invent some term of your own.”
”Very likely I shall, when the time comes for it. At present I have a great deal too much on my hands to have time to think of anything of the kind.”
”In what way?”
”Why! every way of course! There's Daddy, and mother, and Eileen, and the aunties.” She paused a moment, but something in his eyes made her run on recklessly. ”Oh! and the Sunday School, and the garden, and the hockey club, and the aunties' cats, and Jack--!”
”It's quite a long list,” looking amused, ”and O'Hara at the far end.”
”He's in good form to-night,” she said, gazing down at the group in the hall.
Ted followed her eyes.
”He seems to have cheered up since supper.”
”He can't bear Lawrence Blake, he never could, and they were sitting rather near together at supper.”