Both her lessons were valuable to a young man left at twenty-five with a large fortune. But the second—the high delight in companionship—she had taught him through her own delightful personality, and her death left him desperately lonely. His loneliness made him, as one of his friends had said, extremely open to the dangers of matrimony, while on the other hand he had been rendered highly fastidious by his years of happy intimacy with his mother. Her wit and good temper he might have found in another woman—even possibly her concentrated interest in himself—but her fortunate sense of proportion, her knowledge in every-day life, as to what was trivial and what was essential, he found strangely lacking in all his other friends.
He thought now how amusing she would have been about the manicured maid servants, and how, if he and she had been breakfasting together, they would have amused themselves by inventing fantastic explanations, instead of quarreling and sulking at each other as he and Tucker had done.
Tucker had been his father's lawyer. It had been one of the many contradictions in Mrs. Crane's character that, though she had always insisted that as a matter of loyalty to her husband Tucker should be retained as family adviser, she had never been able to conceal from Burton, even when he was still a boy, that she considered the lawyer an intensely comic character.
She used to contrive to throw a world of significance into her pronunciation of his name, "Solon." Crane could still hear her saying it, as if she were indeed addressing the original lawgiver; and it was largely because this recollection was too vivid that he himself had taken to calling his counselor by his last name.
He sighed as he thought of all this; but he was a young man, the day was fine and his horses an absorbing interest, and so he spent a very happy morning, passing his hand along doubtful fetlocks and withers, and consulting with his head man on all the infinity of detail which constitutes the chief joy of so many sports.
At lunch, he appeared to be interested in nothing but the selection of the best mount for Miss Falkener—a state of mind which Tucker considered a great deal more suitable than his former frivolous interest in cats. And soon after lunch was over he went off for a ride, so as to get it in before he had to go and meet his new guests.
A back piazza ran past the dining-room windows. It was shady and contained a long wicker-chair. The November afternoon was warm, and here Tucker decided to rest, possibly to sleep, in order to recuperate from a disturbing night and morning.
He contrived to make himself very comfortable with a sofa pillow and extra overcoat. He slept indeed so long that when he woke the light was beginning to fade. He lay quiet a few moments, thinking that Mrs. Falkener would soon arrive and revolving the best and most encouraging terms in which he could describe the situation to her, when he became aware of voices. His piazza was immediately above the kitchen door, and it was clear that some one had just entered the kitchen from outdoors. And he heard a voice, unmistakably Jane-Ellen's, say:
"Stranger, see how glad Willoughby is to see you again. Just think, he hasn't laid eyes on you for all of three days."
Tucker could not catch the answer which was made in a deep masculine voice, but it was easy to guess its import from the reply of Jane-Ellen.