"I suppose the lieutenant is quite crowded out of it all?" inquired Mr. Jettson of his wife. "Really, Mr. Greaves isn't so bad. But Ralston will take it mightily hard. He'd wait seven years for a woman. And Marian seems, somehow, years older, and is beginning to have some of your mother's dignity."
"It is all settled, certainly. As a topic it is interdicted, and one doesn't get a chance at Marian. Mother and father are elated, only that isn't quite the word to apply to them. And there is the Floyd cousin, very much smitten with Dolly, and I suppose that will be a match. I feel as if I had lost both of the girls. I had planned to do so much for Marian, and keep her near to me."
Mrs. Jettson sighed plaintively.
"You poor girl! Then you will have to comfort yourself with Jaqueline."
"It's queer," continued Jane retrospectively, "but Randolph's family seem nearer to me since they are growing up than my own sisters and brother. Brandon is so bitter against the administration, and such a tremendous aristocrat, while Randolph is always jolly and good-humored, if he can't quite approve of what is done. And Jaqueline is so diverting and attractive, while Mrs. Patricia is charming. If Dolly should go away—"
"Preston Floyd is an agreeable young fellow. Of course the family is all right, and the money, I suppose. Your father will look out for that."
"I know Marian isn't happy—"
"It's a sad piece of business, but it is too late to move in it now."
Jane felt this was true. Could her father have made her give up her lover? Certainly he was not as arbitrary then. Or was it her salvation that no rich lover came to hand?
There was another day of festivity, and a dinner to some who could not come on Christmas Day. Miss Greaves was present with the two elder children, who were stiff and proper. She did not altogether approve of the young wife, when there were more suitable women ready to take her brother.