“Oh, you’ll protest now that you won’t, I know,” she said. “But men are sympathetic—with other men, especially in ‘affairs’—and John’s terribly sensitive. I shouldn’t be surprised if you failed to carry it through. I shouldn’t at all!”
“But—but of course I shall,” Hobart said, before he knew what he was saying. It was not what he wished to say; but he found himself apparently without control of his own speech, for the moment; and he realized that it would now be more difficult than ever to make the needed explanation. He attempted it feebly, however. “That is to say——” he began. “I mean—ah—suppose such an interview shouldn’t——”
The car stopped.
“We’re here,” Anne said. “I hope you’ll be as thoughtful as you can of Mildred. And please don’t be too cordial to John. Let him begin to feel what you think about him.”
But Hobart’s determination, as he followed his wife into his father-in-law’s gaily illuminated house, was to be as cordial as possible to old John and to seek the first private opportunity to request him not to mention their game of the afternoon. Unfortunately, the anniversary dinner was already in jovial motion;—Anne and her husband were late; the adults of the party had yielded to the clamours of the children and had just gone out to the dining-room. Hobart found himself between Mildred and Cornelia, across the wide table from his brother-in-law.
Old John was silent, and his sensitive face wore such visible depression that presently his father-in-law began to rally him upon it. “Good gracious, John, this is a party, not the bedside of a sick friend! Why don’t you eat, or laugh, or anyhow say something? You and Mildred both seem to think it’s a horrible thing to be present at a celebration of two people’s having been happily married for thirty-eight years. Is that what makes you feel so miserable?”
“No, not at all,” John replied, gloomily. “I wasn’t thinking of that. My mind was on other matters.” And, being the singular soul he was, and of such a guileless straightforwardness, he looked across the table at his brother-in-law. “I was thinking of our golf game,” he said, to that gentleman’s acute alarm. “I mean the one this afternoon, Hobart.”
Hobart heard from the chair next upon his right the subdued and lamentable exclamation uttered by Mildred; but what fascinated his paling gaze was the expression of his wife, seated beside old John. She looked at her husband for a moment of great intensity;—then she turned to Tower.
“So?” she said, lightly. “Did Hobart play with you and Julietta again to-day?”
“He played with Julietta,” old John explained, and in his noble simplicity he continued, to his brother-in-law’s horror, “I didn’t seem to be needed. I’ve been very fond of Julietta, very fond indeed of Julietta. She broke her watch in our car yesterday, and so I took her a new one this afternoon and gave it to her before we began to play. Hobart brought her one, too; and she took mine off and wore his. The one I brought her was an ordinary little gold one; but his was platinum and diamonds—it must have cost a remarkable sum. It was very generous and kind of Hobart, because Julietta isn’t well off; but the way she took it made me feel peculiarly disappointed in her. She evidently considers only the relative financial value of gifts, and not the spirit. She was quite different in her manner toward me. I cannot say that I value her friendship as I did.”