The Courting of Lady Jane | Page 2

the assurance of a warm welcome.
"Not the least in the world," Mrs. Leroy smiled whimsically.
"Lady is reading Pater to me for the good of my soul, and I am listening politely for the good of her manners," she answered. "But it is a little wearing for us both, for she knows I don't understand it, and I know she thinks me a little dishonest for pretending to."
"Mother!"
The girl's gray eyes opened wide above her cool, creamy cheeks; the deep dimples that made her mother's face so girlish actually added a regularity and seriousness to the daughter's soft chin. Her chestnut hair was thick and straight, the little half-curls of the same rich tint that fell over her mother's forehead brushed wavelessly back on each side of a deep widow's peak.
The two older ones laughed.
"Always uncompromising, Lady Jane!" the colonel cried.
"I assure you, colonel, when Lady begins to mark iniquities, few of us stand!"
Jane smiled gravely, as on two children. "You know very well that is nonsense," she said.
Black Hannah appeared in the door, beaming and curtsying to the colonel.
"You-all ready foh yoh tea, Miss Lady?" she inquired.
A sudden recollection threw Mrs. Leroy into one of her irresistible fits of gentle laughter.
"Oh, Lady," she murmured, "do you remember that impossible creature that lectured me about Hannah's asking you for orders? Did I tell you about it, colonel?"
Jane shook her head reprovingly.
"Now, mother dearest, you always make him out worse--"
"Worse, my darling? Worse is a word that couldn't be applied to that man. Worse is comparative. Positive he certainly was, superlative is mild, but comparative--never!"
"Tell about it, do," begged the guest.
"Well, he came to see how Lady was growing up--he's a sort of species of relative--and he sat in your chair, colonel, and talked the most amazing Fourth Reader platitudes in a deep bass voice. And when Hannah asked Lady what her orders were for the grocer, he gave me a terrible look and rumbled out: 'I am grieved to see, Cousin Alice, that Jennie has burst her bounds!'
"It sounded horribly indecorous--I expected to see her in fragments on the floor--and I fairly gasped."
"Gasped, mother? You laughed in his face!"
"Did I, dearest? It is possible." Mrs. Leroy admitted. "And when I looked vague he explained, 'I mean that you seem to have relinquished the reins very early, Cousin Alice!'
"'Relinquished? Relinquished?' said I. 'Why, dear me, Mr. Wadham, I never held 'em!'"
"He only meant, mother dear, that--"
"Bless you, my child, I know what he only meant! He explained it to me very fully. He meant that when a widow is left with a ten-year-old child, she should apply to distant cousins to manage her and her funds."
"Disgusting beast!" the colonel exclaimed with feeling, possessing himself of one of Hannah's beaten biscuits, and smiling as Lady Jane's white fingers dropped just the right number of lumps in his tea.
How charming she was, how dignified, how tender to her merry little mother, this grave, handsome girl! He saw her, in fancy, opposite him at his table, moving so stately about his big empty house, filling it with pretty, useless woman's things, lighting every corner with that last touch of grace that the most faithful housekeeper could never hope to add to his lonely life. For Theodosia had taught him that he was lonely. He envied Dick this sister of his.
He wondered that marriage had never occurred to him before: simply it had not. Ever since that rainy day in April, twenty years ago, when they had buried the slender, soft-eyed little creature with his twisted silver ring on her cold finger, he had shut that door of life; and though it had been many years since the little ring had really bound him to a personality long faded from his mind, he had never thought to open the door--he had forgotten it was there.
He was not a talkative man, and, like many such, he dearly loved to be amused and entertained by others who were in any degree attractive to him. The picture of these two dear women adding their wit and charm and dainty way of living to his days grew suddenly very vivid to him; he realized that it was an unconscious counting on their continued interest and hospitality that had made the future so comfortable for so long.
With characteristic directness he began:
"Will your Ladyship allow me a half-hour of business with the queen-mother?"
She rose easily and stepped out through the long window to the little side porch, then to the lawn. They watched her as she paced slowly away from them, a tall violet figure vivid against all the green.
"She is a dear girl, isn't she?" said her mother softly.
A sudden flood of delighted pride surged through the colonel's heart. If only he might keep them happy and contented and--and his! He