Diantha's composure throughout the ceremony had suggested that being married was an every-day matter to a person of her wide experience. Her poise and self-possession were the occasion of wondering comment among the many who were hardly able to realize even now that she had really grown up. It was not till the reception, when Persis with Thomas following bashfully in her wake came up lo proffer her good wishes, that Diantha relapsed into youthfulness. She flung her arms about her old friend's neck and kissed her tumultuously.
"Darling Miss Persis, how perfectly lovely you look! Did you get that beautiful dress just for my wedding?"
The composition of Persis' reply apparently took a little time. She did not speak for a minute.
"Yes, I made it for your wedding," she returned at length. "But I used it for my own, too. Thomas and I slipped over to the minister's after supper and got married. So we'll both wish each other joy, my dearie."
It was a shock of course, but Clematis was getting used to that where Persis was concerned. And Mrs. Hornblower voiced the feeling of more than herself when she commented on the affair at the next meeting of the Woman's Club. Persis was not present. She and Thomas had gone on a wedding trip to the seashore, and taken all the children.
"It's a kind of back-handed way of getting a family," said Mrs. Hornblower. "Picking up one child here and another there, and then winding up with a husband. But I must say it'll take a load off my mind to see a man at the head of Persis Dale's pew."
CHAPTER XXIV
FAIR PLAY
The late October sunshine poured its prodigal gold into the little room of which Annabel Sinclair was the sole occupant, and as its single door and window were both closed, the resulting temperature was suggestive of mid-July. The room itself was plain and bare. The cottage Thad West had purchased the year following his marriage was needlessly spacious for the immediate requirements of the two young people and for that reason, several of the rooms had been left unfurnished or nearly so, until time should justify Thad's foresight. As a rule Annabel had a feline instinct for comfort, selecting the easiest chair and the pleasantest outlook almost unconsciously. To-day her discomfort and the convent-like austerity of her surroundings failed to impress her. She was hardly aware of them.
She was not in her daughter's home of her own volition that October morning. She had yielded as the most self-willed must on occasion to the assumption of her little world that this was the place where she would wish to be. But the first glimpse of Diantha had convinced her that her shrinking recoil had been well-grounded. Diantha, deadly pale and yet with little flickering, unsteady smiles, Diantha, quiet and self-possessed, with nothing but those white cheeks to show how flesh and spirit shrank from the approaching ordeal, was terrifyingly a stranger. But that she was a woman there could be no doubt. And this woman, soon to be a mother, was her child.