“Oh, John’s a hero, no doubt of that!” Catherine’s out-flung glittering hands illustrated her somewhat contemptuous attitude toward most things which others approved, her husband included. “Heroes are all right when one is young and unsophisticated, but they do seem stereotyped to a grown-up. Don’t you think so? You always know exactly what they are going to do. The villains, now, are more interesting. There’s some excitement in learning the worst about them—always a chance for something unexpected. They may even reform. You ought to agree with me, Rufus.”
“I might,” Holt returned, “but for certain suspicions as to which class you are consigning me. In all my comradeship with John I never felt sure of anything connected with what he was going to do except that it would be the square thing when done.”
The small controversy was closed by the appearance of its subject. As he stood looking in on them from the doorway—the master of the house—he was photographed on Dolores’ memory. Clean-cut against the vista of the dim-lit foyer in his evening black and white, his hands depending stiffly, his head side-set, he suggested controlled power.
From his first surprised glance at herself, she appreciated that he had been unprepared for the presence of the governess. But his wife’s expectant eyes also were upon her.
Licensed by the fact that she had not seen him in a couple of days, Dolores offered him her hand in greeting and looked up into his face when he stooped to touch for the briefest of moments her finger-tips. Yesterday she would have veiled her admiration. To-night she had a prescribed part to play. She could not help regretting the overture, however, when she saw his smile recede; realized that he had turned, without a word, away from her. A pressure hurt her throat. But she cheered at Catherine’s encouraging nod. Remembering those in-caving bricks of his down-town “Wall,” she forgave the forbidding attitude of one said to be so just.
When dinner was announced, she obeyed Catherine’s signal that she take the arm of the host. On their stroll through the great hall toward the dining-room, she found occasion to thank him for the latest Cabot gift.
“The dress—that I gave you?” His tone was mildly exclamatory.
“You and Mrs. Cabot.”
“So I gave you that dress?” he asked more easily. “Of course we are getting on toward Christmas. Then I am prepared for little surprises like this—have to go around, you know, asking everybody what I gave them. I wonder why—the dress?”
She tried not to show how disconcerted she felt. “Mrs. Cabot said it was because I get along so well with Jack, although that’s nothing to reward me so beautifully for. Getting on with Jack is its own reward.”