“Doctor Boyd proposed to you to-night,” she charged, with affectionate authority.
“Yes, Aunt Helen,” and Gail began to pull pins out of her hair.
A worried expression crossed the brow of Aunt Helen.
“Did you accept him?” and she fairly quivered with anxiety.
“No, Aunt Helen.” Quite calmly, piling more hairpins and still more into the little tray by her side, and shaking down her rippling waves of hair.
Aunt Helen sighed a deep sigh of relief, and smiled her approval.
“I was quite hopeful that you would not,” and the tone was one of distinct pleasure. “Doctor Boyd is a most estimable young man, but I should not at all consider him a desirable match for you.”
Gail walked across to her dressing table, and rang for her maid. Something within her flared up in defence of Tod, but the face which, an instant later, she turned toward the older woman, had its eyelids down and the eyes glinting through that curving fringe and the little smile at the corners of the lips.
“Of course, he is perfectly eligible,” went on Aunt Helen, studying the young man in question much as if he were on the auction block, and guaranteed sound in every limb. “While there would be no possibility of gaiety, and no freedom of action for even an instant, with the eyes of every one so critically fixed on a rector’s wife, still she would have the entrée into the most exclusive circles, and would have a social position of such dignified respectability as could be secured in no other way.” Interested in her own analysis, and perfectly placid because, after all, Gail had refused him, she did not notice that Gail, now brushing her hair, stopped in the middle of a downward stroke, and then fell to brushing furiously. “Moreover, the young man is highly ambitious,” went on Aunt Helen. “The movement for the magnificent new cathedral had lagged for years before he came; but he had not been here twelve months before he had the entire congregation ambitious to build the most magnificent cathedral the world has ever seen. My dear child, you’ll break your hair with that rough brushing! Moreover, the new rectory must, of course, be built in keeping with the cathedral, and no multi-millionaire could erect a home more palatial than Doctor Boyd will occupy.”
Gail unfastened her necklace.