She looked up eagerly.
“Then you will be asked to stand?”
He smiled; partly at her readiness of comprehension, partly at the frank, feminine hard-heartedness which realizes nothing beyond the circle of its own affections.
“You mustn’t kill him off in that summary fashion, poor fellow.”
“I meant, of course, if he should die.”
“Under those circumstances I believe they will ask me to stand. That’s the beauty of you, Judith,” he added, half-seriously, half jestingly, “one never has to waste one’s breath with needless explanation.”
She blushed, and smiled naïvely at the little compliment with its studied uncouthness.
There was something incongruous in the girl’s rich and stately beauty, in the deep, serious gaze of the wonderful eyes, the severe, almost tragic lines of the head and face, with her total lack of manner, her little, abrupt, simple air, her apparent utter unconsciousness of her own value and importance as a young and beautiful woman.
“Judith is not a woman of the world, certainly,” Reuben had said on one occasion, in reply to a criticism of his sister’s; “but neither is she a bad imitation of one.” And Adelaide, scenting a brotherly sarcasm, had allowed the subject to drop.
Leo, who had broken his bit of silk and hummed his song to the end, rose at this point, and went from the room without a word.