Gault stood gazing till the tall figure passed out of sight. When he turned back from the window his clerks noticed that he looked moodily preoccupied.
Five days after this the colonel appeared again. He was urbane, affable, and easy as an old shoe, and, with the air of a king honoring a faithful servant, borrowed thirty dollars more.
This was on Saturday. On Sunday afternoon Gault, who had passed a restless night, resolved to escape from the irritation of his own thoughts and seek amusement in the society of Letitia. For this purpose he took an early lunch at his club, and by two o’clock was wending his way up the sunlit streets that run between large houses and blooming gardens through what is known as the Western Addition.
For the past six years it had been an open secret in that small family circle that Mortimer Gault and his wife wished to make a marriage between John and Letitia. Certainly it was a neat combination of the family relationships and properties that might have suggested itself to any one. The ambition had originated with Maud Gault, who, like most managing, clever women, was a match-maker, and who, with her social successes and pecuniary ambitions, would naturally select as the husband of her only sister this rich, agreeable, and presentable gentleman who was so constantly in their society, and who stood upon that footing of a semi-romantic intimacy which distant relationship gives. But it was difficult to force the two objects of this matrimonial plot into sentimental relations. Letitia was reserved upon the subject of her own feelings. Mrs. Gault, who was not reserved upon any subject except her age, could get nothing out of the girl, either as to what she herself felt for John or as to what she thought he felt for her. Sometimes Letitia laughed a little when the persistent questions of her sister were hard to avoid; sometimes she blushed; and once or twice she had grown angry and rebelled against this intrusive catechizing. It was difficult even for so keen a woman as Maud Gault to read the girl’s heart.
John Gault, who was sincerely fond of Letitia, in a steady-going, brotherly way, watched the manœuvers of his sister-in-law with a good deal of inward amusement. He was confident that Letitia entertained the same sort of regard for him that he did for her, and he took an honest and simple pleasure in the frank good-fellowship that existed between them. Now and then, it is true, he had vaguely thought of the young girl as his wife, and had wondered, in an idle way, whether he could win her affection. He thought that no man could ever find a better wife than she would make. But these were aimless speculations, and no one knew of them. Even Maud Gault sometimes felt discouraged—he was so exasperatingly pleased when she told him of Letitia’s admirers!
Though it was so early, Gault found one of these rivals already before him. Tod McCormick, the only son of Jerry McCormick, who had been “made” by Colonel Reed, was sitting with Letitia in the drawing-room, to which the umbrella-plants and palms gave an overheated and tropical appearance. The sunlight poured into the room, and, shining through the green of all this juicy and outspreading foliage over the lustrous silks on piled-up cushions and upholstered chairs, gave an impression of radiance and color even more brilliant than that imparted by the lamplight.
In the midst of the rainbow brightness Letitia sat among the cushions. She was very upright, for she was not of the long, lithe order of women who lounge gracefully, but in her tight-drawn silks and pendulating laces she found her habitual attitude of square-shouldered erectness more comfortable.
Her guest, who rose to meet the newcomer, looked as if he must be a changeling in the blooming and lusty brood of Jerry McCormick. While his sisters were women of that richness of coloring and contour peculiar to California, Tod was not five feet and a half high, and was thin, meager, sallow-skinned, and weak-eyed. A thatch of lifeless hair covered his narrow head, and a small and sickly mustache had been coaxed into existence on his upper lip. He was in reality twenty-seven years old, but he looked hardly twenty. Even his clothes, of the most fashionable make and texture, could not impart to him an air of elegance or style. Their very splendor seemed to heighten his insignificance.
“Howdy, Gault,” he said, his small and weazened countenance lightened by a fleeting and evidently perfunctory smile. “You’re early, but I’m earlier.”