“There’s where you show your unintelligence,” declared Miss Fitch. “I shall be as frilly as I can, because you yourself are a model of smooth and tailored fitness, and he will want a relief for his eyes. He shall find it in me. Really, wasn’t he awfully game to preach, with that shoulder?”
“He’s a Scot,” said Nan Lockhart. “Of course he would, if it killed him.”
The result of this exchange of views was that Miss Fitch appeared looking like a fascinating young saint in a sheer white frock. Had she a white heart? Well, anyhow, she looked the embodiment of ingenuousness, for her masses of fair hair were too curly to be entirely subdued, no matter how confined, and her deep blue eyes beneath the blonde locks might have been those of a beautiful child.
“Oh, I say!” ejaculated Tom Lockhart, when she first came downstairs, the transformation from her dark smoothness of church garb to this spring-like outburst of whiteness hitting him full in his vulnerable young heart—as usual.
“Well—like me, Tommy dear?” asked Fanny Fitch, letting her fingers rest for the fraction of a second on his dark-blue coat-sleeve.
“Like you!” breathed Tom. “I say—why did I bring him home to dinner? Now you’ll just fascinate him—and forget me!”
“Forget you? Why, Tom!” And Miss Fitch gave him an enchanting glance which made his heart turn over. Then she went on into the big living room, where Robert McPherson Black, damaged shoulder and arm in a fine black silk sling, the colour now wholly restored to his interesting face, rose courteously to be presented to her. Of course he did not know it, but it was at that moment that he encountered a quite remarkable combination of the world, the flesh, and the devil. Up to now he had met each of these tremendous forces separately, but never before all together in one slim girl’s form. And yet, right here, it must be definitely asserted and thoroughly assimilated, that Fanny Fitch was what is known as an entirely “nice” girl, and in her heart at that hour was nothing which could be called an evil intent. The worst that could be said of her was that she was ruthless in exacting tribute—even as Cæsar. And when her eye had fallen upon the minister, with his right arm out of commission but the rest of him exceedingly assertive of power, she had coveted him. To her, the rest seemed easy.
As to Black—he was not “easy.” In his very young manhood he had loved very much the pretty daughter of his Southern employer, but she had been as far out of his reach as the furthermost star in the bright constellations which nightly met his eye in the skies above him. When she had married he had firmly and definitely put the thought of woman out of his head, and had formulated a code concerning the whole sex intended to hold throughout his ministry. During his entire first pastorate he had been a model of discretion—as a young minister in a country community must be, if he would not have his plans for service tumbling about his ears. Fortunately for him he was, by temperament and by training, not over susceptible to any ordinary feminine environment or approach. He had a hearty and wholesome liking for the comradeship of men, greatly preferring it to the frequent and unavoidable association with women necessary in the workings of church affairs. Even when his eye first rested upon the really enchanting beauty of Miss Fanny Fitch, if he could have exchanged her, as his companion at the Lockhart dinner table, for R. P. Burns, M.D., he would have done it in the twinkling of an eye. For had not Red shaved him that morning, and wasn’t another barrier most probably well down? It was of that he was thinking, and not, just then, of her.
But she forced him to think of her—it was an art in which she was a finished performer. She did it by cutting up for him that portion of a crown roast of spring lamb which Mr. Samuel Lockhart sent to him upon his plate. Up to that moment, throughout the earlier courses, he had been engaged with the rest in a general discussion of the subject of the war, quite naturally brought up by the sermon of the morning. But when it came to regarding helplessly the food which now appeared before him unmanageable by either fork or spoon, he found himself for the first time talking with Miss Fitch alone, while the conversation of the others went ahead upon a new tack.
“Oh, but this makes me think of how many poor fellows have to have their food cut up for them, over there,” she was saying, as her pretty, ringless fingers expertly prepared the tender meat for his consumption. “While you were speaking this morning I was wishing, as I’ve been wishing ever since this terrible war began, that I could be really helping, on the other side. If it hadn’t been for my mother, who is quite an invalid, I should have gone long ago. You made it all so real——”