"True enough! But you're not going to settle down in sober ways and wear hodden gray. And it's not as if you had been jilted by some gay gallant who had married another girl before your eyes as Christy Speers' lover did. And she found a much better man without any long waiting, for Everlom has never succeeded in anything and now he has taken to drink. Don't you suppose Christy is glad she missed her chance with him!"
"It won't be that way, though. I think now he will make a fine man and we shall hear nothing disgraceful about him, if we ever hear at all, which I pray may never come to pass. For I want to put it out of my mind like a story I have read with a bad ending."
"You are a brave girl, Daffodil."
"I don't know why I should be really unhappy. I have so many to love me. And it doesn't matter if I should never marry."
Mrs. Forbes laughed at that, but made no reply. Here was the young lieutenant, who was taking heart of grace again, though he did not push himself forward.
On the whole it was not an unhappy summer for Daffodil. She found a great interest in helping Felix though he was not a booky boy. Always his mind seemed running on some kind of machinery, something that would save time and labor.
"Now, if you were to do so," he would say to his father, "you see it would bring about this result and save a good deal of time. Why doesn't some one see——"
"You get through with your books and try it yourself. There's plenty of space in the world for real improvements."
Daffodil went up to the old trysting place one day. How still and lonesome it seemed. Had the squirrels forgotten her? They no longer ran up her arm and peered into her eyes. He was at Hurst Abbey and that arrogant, imperious woman was queening it as my lady. Was all this satisfying him?
It was the right thing to do even if his motives were not of the highest. To comfort his father in the deep sorrow, and there was his little son.