"Mother has been telling me," he says, with a wise, curious smile. "Let me congratulate you. To-morrow we will talk it over and arrange everything. I will be your banker for the present. Only—are you quite sure I shall like the young man?" And he holds her in a tender clasp.
"You cannot help it! O Floyd, how good you are, and how very, very happy it makes me! I began to feel afraid that I had come under the family ban."
"Dismiss all fears." He thinks her a very pretty young girl as she stands there, and he is pleased that his return is bringing forth good fruit so soon.
There is a pleasant confusion of good nights and good wishes, the great hall doors are shut, and they all troop up the wide walnut staircase quite as if an evening party had broken up. Floyd Grandon, though not a demonstrative man, lingers to give his mother a parting kiss, and is glad that he has returned to comfort her.
CHAPTER II.
When a woman has ceased to be quite the same to us, it matters not how different she becomes.—W. S. Landor.
The house is still. Every one is shut in with his or her thoughts. Floyd Grandon goes to the bed of his little girl, where Jane sits watching in an uncertain state, since everything is so new and strange.
How lovely the child is! The rosy lips are parted, showing the pearly teeth, the face is a little flushed with warmth, one pale, pink-tinted ear is like a bit of sculpture, the dimpled shoulder, the one dainty bare foot outside the spread, seem parts of a cherub. He presses it softly; he kisses the sweet lips that smile. Is it really the sense of ownership that makes her so dear?
He has never experienced this jealous, overwhelming tenderness for anything human. He loves his mother with all a son's respect, and has a peculiar sympathy for her. If his father were alive he knows they would be good comrades to stand by each other, to have a certain positive faith and honor in each other's integrity. His brother and sisters—well, he has never known them intimately, even as one gets to know friends, but he will take them upon trust. Then there are two women,—the mother of his child, and that affluent, elegant being across the hall. Does his heart warm to her? And yet she might have been mistress here and the mother of his children. The "might have been" in his thought would comfort his mother greatly, who is wondering, as she moves restlessly on her pillow, if it may not yet be.