“No! Really?” cried Stafford. “Upon my word, that’s very interesting! You’ll pardon me, but do you mind telling me where you heard of that doorway?”
“I read about it,” said Jacqueline simply, “in a book by Luther Stafford, ‘Vistas of Enchantment.’”
“No!” he cried, his dark face all alight. “Please allow me to introduce myself—Luther Stafford, the writer of that little book.”
So it came about that Mr. Terrill and Mr. Stafford were presented to each other. When the enthusiastic Stafford suggested it, Terrill drove them all in the car to see the doorway of the old Veagh house; but he was singularly lukewarm about that architectural relic, and he did not even pretend to share in Miss Miles’s hitherto unsuspected passion for old doorways.
No—he simply drove the car, and Miss Miles and Stafford sat on the back seat. He heard them talking. Miss Miles was not imperious now. She was so sweet, so gentle, so serious, so humbly anxious to be instructed. She seemed to possess such a surprising acquaintance with architectural terms!
And all the time Jacqueline was praying in her heart:
“Oh, let me make him like me! Oh, please, let me make him like me!”
If she could only win Stafford’s unqualified approval, think what it might mean to Barty and herself! She had never wanted anything so much in her life before.[Pg 214]
Barty had often told her that Stafford was the most thoroughly likable fellow he had ever met; but, hearing of the famous architect’s high-strung nerves, his squeamishness, his minor affectations, she had privately doubted the soundness of this estimate. Now she understood, however. His fine enthusiasm for his art, his eagerness to share it, his spontaneous courtesy, and, above all, something generous and frank and indisputably great that was obvious in all that he said and did, won her immediate respect and liking. And, oh, how she wanted him to like her!
As they drove away from the abandoned farmhouse, it occurred to Stafford that the sun was going down the sky.