Mrs. Minster uttered the little monosyllable “oh!” with a hesitating, long-drawn-out sound. It was evident that this revelation altered matters in her mind, and Horace hurried on:
“No,” he said; “the relation between mother and child has always seemed to pie the most sacred thing on earth—perhaps because my own mother died so many, many years ago. I would rather stifle my own feelings than let an act of mine desecrate or imperil that relation. It may be that I am old-fashioned, Mrs. Minster,” the young man continued, with a deprecatory smile, “but I like the old habit of the good families—that of deferring to the parents. I say that to them the chief courtesy and deference are due. I know it is out of date, but I have always felt that way. So I speak to you first. I say to you with profound respect that you have reared the loveliest and best of all the daughters of the sons of men, and that if you will only entertain the idea of permitting me to strive to win her love, I shall be the proudest and happiest mortal on earth.”
Whatever might betide with the daughter, the conquest of the mother was easy and complete.
“I like your sentiments very much indeed,” she said, with evident sincerity. “And I like you too. I may as well tell you so. Of course I haven’t the least idea what Kate will say.”
“Oh, leave that to me!” said Horace, with ardent confidence. Then, after this rapturous outburst, he went on more quietly: “I would beg of you not to mention the subject to her. I think that would be best. Your favor has allowed me to come and go here on pleasant terms of friendship. Let these terms not be altered. I will not ask your daughter to commit herself until she has had time and chance to know me through and through. It would not be fair to her otherwise. To pick a husband is the one grand, irrevocable step in a young girl’s life. Its success means bliss, content, sunshine; its failure means all that is the reverse. Therefore, I say, she cannot have too much information, too many advantages, to help her in her choice.”
Thus it came to be understood that Mrs. Minster was to say nothing, and was not to seem to make more of Horace than she had previously done.
Then he bowed over her hand and lightly kissed it, in a fashion which the good lady fondly assumed to be European, and was gone.
Mrs. Minster spent the rest of the afternoon and evening in a semi-dazed abstraction of mental power, from time to time fitfully remembering some wealthy young man whom she had vaguely considered as a possible son-in-law, and sighing impartially over each mustached and shirt-fronted figure as she pushed it out into the limbo of the might-have-been. She almost groaned once when she recalled that this secret must be kept even from her friend Tabitha.
As for Horace, he walked on air. The marvel of his great success surrounded and lifted him, as angels bear the souls of the blessed fleeting from earth in the artist’s dream. The young Bonaparte, home from Italy and the reproduction of Hannibal’s storied feat, with Paris on its knees before him and France resounding with his name, could not have swung his shoulders more proudly, or gazed upon unfolding destiny with a more exultant confidence.
On his way homeward an instinctive desire to be alone with his joy led him to choose unfrequented streets, and on one of these he passed a milliner’s shop which he had never seen before. He would not have noted it now, save that his eye was unconsciously caught by some stray freak of color in the window where bonnets were displayed. Then, still unconsciously, his vision embraced the glass door beside this window, and there suddenly it was arrested and turned to a bewildered stare.