"Then I'm sorry if the suggestion has worried you. I'll see you're not bothered again." He spoke confidently, and Agatha hoped he did not overestimate his influence where Ridgeley Warren was concerned. When she remembered the square chin of the last-named young man, she did not feel sure.
In her heart she gave Forbes credit for having done his best. Later in the day Howard showed her a letter he had written to Mr. Ridgeley Warren at Forbes' dictation. Without explanation but in the most emphatic manner possible, Warren was assured that his scheme was impracticable. "I can not very well go into details," the letter ran, "but Miss Kent, who knows the case thoroughly, has convinced me that the kindest thing, as far as the girl is concerned, is to leave her alone." And to this sentiment Agatha sighed a tremulous amen.
DAY DREAMS
For the first time since she could remember, Miss Finch felt herself living in an atmosphere of romance. If a young man's fancy turns to thoughts of love only under the allurements of spring weather, Zaida Finch surpassed the average youth by full three seasons. Love and matrimony occupied her thoughts twelve months in the year, and to an extent inconceivable in view of her general colorless and withered aspect.
Though as far as possible removed from the designing spinster of the comic stage, Miss Finch had not as yet surrendered the hope of changing her name. From her point of view the unmarried woman was a self-advertised failure. Husbands, as far as she had been able to observe, were always disappointing, and not infrequently obnoxious, yet to lack one somehow proved one's self less than a woman. In those dreams which never passed the bounds of maidenly reserve, she sometimes imagined herself addressed by the prefix which indicates the dignity of wifehood—she would have died sooner than have coupled it with the name of any man of her acquaintance—and then in the words of a simpler and more direct age, she felt that her reproach among men had been taken away. The secret weighing heaviest on her heart was the knowledge that no man had ever indicated that he wanted her.
Needless to say, Miss Finch's present mood of sentiment was entirely vicarious. Agatha's prospects absorbed her almost to the exclusion of her own timid dreams. Miss Finch was constitutionally incapable of realizing Agatha's vivid beauty, though she sometimes told herself that if it were not for her red hair, which she innocently assumed to be a misfortune, Agatha would be a really pretty girl. Forbes had no sooner made his appearance than Miss Finch had inventoried his qualifications for Agatha's future husband, and had not found him altogether wanting. His blindness was a misfortune largely offset by his amiability, and free use of money, and in her association with him, Agatha had developed a sympathetic patience her old friend could not regard as characteristic.
"And it looks to me as if he were taken with her," Miss Finch had congratulated herself. "He chirks up as soon as she comes near him. If he likes her so well when he thinks she's an old woman, he ought to like her better when he finds she's a young one."