Tiny’s massive dignity relaxed under a pink flood. “I have had other offers, you know, and some from very rich men,” she said as she slipped to the floor, “and it’s really commonplace nowadays to marry a title. Give me a kiss, and tell me you want me to be happy, and I’ll go back to bed. I’m cold.”
CHAPTER XIX
“I HAVE taken a day off in honour of the great event,” said Randolph at the breakfast-table.
Lee smiled sweetly, but one of her shoulders gave an impatient little jerk. Randolph had proposed four times already, since his return from Europe, three weeks ago. Mrs. Montgomery smiled approvingly. She had tolerated the correspondence with Cecil Maundrell out of respect to the wishes of the dead; but she had long since permitted herself to hope that the ridiculous boy-and-girl engagement would die a natural death, and that there would be one change the less in her happy domestic life. She had covered the table with wild flowers, sent from Menlo, in honour of Lee’s birthday, and had ordered three different varieties of hot bread, besides the usual meed of griddle cakes, chicken, hash, hominy and eggs. It was to Lee’s happy indifference to the popular American breakfast that she owed her superb health and colour. Tiny looked as fragile as porcelain beside her; and even Randolph, although he had achieved height and sinews, had the dull complexion and thin cheeks of the American who adds the tax of alcohol and late hours to the decimating national diet. He was by no means dissipated, for San Francisco; but he worked very hard during the day, and, when free of the social claims of his family—to whom he was devoted—took his recreations with other youths by night. He had left college at the end of his first year, studied architecture for another year in New York and Paris, and had sold his first plan—for a Bonanza king’s “palatial residence” on Nob Hill—three months later. Since then he had had little leisure, and had made money: he was practical, with a zigzag of originality, and planned and worked with marvellous rapidity. There were lines about his sharp nervous grey eyes, and, six months before, he had broken down, and gone to England to rest, and visit Lord Arrowmount. His manners were not what they had been in his remote boyhood, but they were still fine, and he had a certain distinction, in spite of a slight stoop and a decided restlessness of manner.
After breakfast he followed Lee to the garden, and they sat down under the willow.
“Don’t propose just yet,” said Lee. “I feel in a perfectly beatific humour, and I wouldn’t be made cross for the world.”
“Not for the world, if you don’t wish it,” said Randolph airily. “I will postpone it until to-morrow afternoon at six. That will give me just half an hour before dinner.”
“I don’t believe you ever are really serious. You wouldn’t be half so nice if you were.”
“It is difficult to be serious with a habit. Whenever I propose I have a sudden vision of pinafores, and braids, and angles. It takes all my mental nimbleness to realise that you are really marriageable—in spite of your beauty.”
He spoke in his usual bantering voice, and his eyes smiled, but his nervous hands were pressed hard against each other.