Mr., Mrs. and Miss Force went everywhere, and received everybody—within the limits of their social circle.
Odalite, for the first time in her short life, enjoyed society with a real youthful zest.
There was no drawback now. Her mother’s deadly enemy had passed to his account, and could trouble her no more, she thought. Le was coming home, and they were to be married soon, and go to Europe and see all the beauties and splendors and glories of the Old World, which she so longed to view. They were to sojourn in the old, ancestral English home which had been the scene of her mother’s childhood—ah! and the scene of so many exploits of her ancestors—sieges, defenses, captures, recoveries, confiscations by this ruler, restorations by that—events which had passed into history and helped to make it. She would see London—wonderful, mighty London!—St. Paul’s, the Tower. Oh! and Paris, and the old Louvre!—Rome! St. Peter’s! the Coliseum! the Catacombs!—places which the facilities of modern travel have made as common as a market house to most of the educated world, but which, to this imaginative, country girl, were holy ground, sacred monuments, wonderful, most wonderful relics of a long since dead and gone world.
And Le would be her companion in all these profound enjoyments! And, after all, they should return home and settle down at Greenbushes, never to part again, but to be near neighbors to father, mother, sisters and friends; to give and receive all manner of neighborly kindnesses, courtesies, hospitalities.
Odalite’s heart was as full of happy thoughts as is a hive of honey bees. Her happiness beamed from her face, shining on all who approached her.
If Odalite had been admired during the two past seasons when she was pale, quiet and depressed, how much more was she admired now in her fair, blooming beauty, that seemed to bring sunshine, life and light into every room she entered.
Mrs. Force felt all a mother’s pride in the social success of her daughter.
But to Odalite herself the proudest and happiest day of the whole season was that on which she received a letter from Le, announcing his immediate return home.
“This letter,” he wrote, “will go by the steamer that leaves this port on the thirteenth of January. We have our sailing orders for the first of February. On that day we leave this blessed port homeward bound. Winds and waves propitious, we shall arrive early in March, and then—and then, Odalite——”
And then the faithful lover and prospective bridegroom went off into the extravagances that were to be expected, even of him.