Kate had made no answer. Who Langdon Willits's grandmother was, or whether he had any grandmother at all, did not concern her in the least. She rather admired the young Albemarle Sound girl for walking boldly into the Willits family—low born as she was—and making them respect her.
But none of Peggy's outspoken warnings nor any of St. George's silent acceptances of the several situations—always a mark of his disapproval—checked the game of love-making which was going on—the give-and-take stage of it, with the odds varying with each new shifting of the cards, both Peggy and St. George growing the more nervous.
“She's going to accept him, St. George,” Peggy had said to him one morning as he stood behind her chair while she was shelling the peas for dinner. “I didn't think so when he first came, but I believe it now. I have said all I could to her. She has cuddled up in my arms and cried herself sick over it, but she won't hold out much longer. Young Rutter left her heart all torn and bleeding and this man has bound up the sore places. She will never love anybody that way again—and may be it is just as well. He'd have kept her guessing all her life as to what he'd do next. I wish Willits's blood was better, for she's a dear, sweet child and proud as she can be, only she's proud over different things from what I would be. But you can make up your mind to it—she'll keep him dangling for a while yet, as she did last summer at the Red Sulphur, but she'll be his wife in a year or less—you mark my words. You haven't yet heard from the first one, have you?—as to when he's coming home?”
St. George hadn't heard—he sighed in return—a habit of his lately: No, not for two months or more—not since the letter in which Harry said he had left the ship and had gone up into the interior. He had, he told her, mentioned the boy's silence to Kate in a casual way, watching the effect the news produced upon her—but after the remark that the mails were always irregular from those far-away countries, she had turned the conversation into other channels, she having caught sight of Willits, who had just dismounted from his horse.
As to St. George's own position in the affair he felt that his hands were still so firmly tied that he could do nothing one way or the other. His personal intercourse with Willits had been such as he would always have with a man with whom he was on speaking terms, but it never passed that border. He was courteous, careful of his speech, and mindful of the young man's devotion to Kate, whose guardian for the time being he was, but he neither encouraged nor thwarted his suit. Kate was of age and was fully competent to decide for herself—extremely competent, for that matter.
How little this clear reader of women's hearts—and scores had been spread out before him—knew of Kate's, no one but the girl herself could have told. That she was adrift on an open sea without a rudder, and that she had already begun to lose confidence both in her seamanship and in her compass, was becoming more and more apparent to her every day she lived. All she knew positively was that she had been sailing before the wind for some weeks past with everything flying loose, and that the time had now come for her either to “go about” or keep on her course.
Her suitor's family she had carefully considered. She had also studied his environment and the impression he made upon those who had known him longest:—she must now focus her mental lenses on the man himself. He had, she knew, graduated with honors, being the valedictorian of his class; had risen rapidly in his profession, and, from what her father said, would soon reach a high place among his brother lawyers. There was even talk of sending him to the legislature, where her own father, the Honorable Prim, had achieved his title. She wished, of course, that Mr. Willits's hair was not quite so red; she wished, too, that the knuckles on his hands were not so large and bony—and that he was not always at her beck and call; but these, she was forced to admit, were trifles in the make-up of a fine man. There was, however, a sane mind under the carrot-colored hair and a warm palm inside the knotted knuckles, and that was infinitely more important than little physical peculiarities which one would forget as life went on. As to his periods of ill health, these she herself could have prevented had she told him the whole truth that night on the stairs, or the day before when she had parried his direct proposal of marriage—a piece of stupidity for which she never failed to blame herself.
His future conduct did not trouble her in the least. She had long since become convinced that Willits would never again become intemperate. He had kept his promise, and this meant more to her than his having given way to past temptations. The lesson he had learned at the ball had had, too, its full effect. One he had never forgotten. Over and over again he had apologized to her for his brutal insolence in laying his profane hands on her dancing-card and tearing it to bits before her eyes. He had, moreover, deeply regretted the duel and had sworn to her on his honor as a gentleman that he would never fight another.
Each time she had listened quietly and had told him how much she was pleased and how grateful she was for his confidence and how such fine resolutions redounded to his credit, and yet in thinking it over the next day she could not help comparing his meek outbursts of sorrow with Harry's blunt statement made to her the last time she saw him in the park, when, instead of expressing any regret for having shot Willits, he had boldly declared that he would do it again if any such insult were repeated. And strange to say—and this she could not understand in herself—in all such comparisons Harry came out best.
But:—and here she had to hold on to her rudder with all her might—she had already made one mistake, tumbling head over heels in love with a young fellow who had mortified her before the world when their engagement was less than a few months old, making her name and affections a byword, and she could not and would not repeat the blunder. This had shattered her customary self-reliance, leaving her wellnigh helpless. Perhaps after all—an unheard-of thing in her experience—she had better seek advice of some older and wiser pilot. Two heads, or even three—(here her canny Scotch blood asserted itself)—were better than one in deciding so important a matter as the choosing of a mate for life. And yet—now she came to think it over—it was not so much a question of heads as it was a question of shoulders on which the heads rested. To turn to St. George, or to any member of the Willits kin, was impossible. Peggy's views she understood. Counsel, however, she must have, and at once.