"Well, I mean to give you a very quiet but handsome gown for dinner parties. Rowena, take her out directly after luncheon."
And so it came to pass that when General Macdonald arrived that evening he was introduced to a very sweet-looking, dignified woman in a brown velvet gown which matched her brown eyes and hair. He came early, and had an interview with her in Mrs. Burke's back drawing-room. There was a light in his eyes, as he joined Rowena just before dinner, and had the opportunity of speaking to her alone. "She'll do," he said. "I like her extremely. A woman with religion and principle. She's willing to come, but not just yet, I'm afraid—says she must wait till her mother returns home. And she does not seem to know when that will be. She has shown me any amount of certificates and references, but I know a good woman when I see her, and I place that first; education comes afterwards."
Dinner was a difficult time. Mrs. Burke was in her usual high spirits, and rattled away in an astonishing fashion it seemed to her niece. General Macdonald was courteous, but rather stiff, and Rowena strove to bridge over awkward pauses and water down some of Mrs. Burke's rash statements.
"I'm sure my niece is one of your sort," she informed the General. "You Scotch people always take life seriously, and she has been brought up in the old-fashioned orthodox style. Her family never has approved of me."
"Why is it old-fashioned to take life seriously?" said General Macdonald gravely. "Isn't life with all of us a very wonderful and mysterious thing?"
"Oh, I have learnt to take things as I find them," said Mrs. Burke, deliberately giving a slow wink to Rowena. "I'm not good at theology, or at any of the other 'ologies. But I remember a maxim of Solomon's—or one of the Bible sages: 'A man hath no better thing under the sun than to eat and to drink and to be merry.' And I practise that every day of my life."
"Oh, Aunt Caroline!" protested her niece.
"We have the story of one who practised that too in the Bible," said General Macdonald, fixing a stern eye upon his hostess. "And his summons to meet his God came like a thunderbolt to him."
"Yes, I think I used to be terrorized by that story when I was a child," said Mrs. Burke with smiling indifference.
Rowena felt so nervous that she almost laughed, a habit which sometimes overcame her against her will.