The colonel did not fail to drive home the inevitable moral, and congratulated himself upon his daughter’s escape. Dora was obliged to acknowledge that Dick, if not a villain, was at least a fool. The sorrow he had brought upon his father and mother was alone sufficient to warrant the heartiest condemnation. The colonel was never tired of commenting on the awful change in the mother’s appearance 196 and the blight upon John Swinton, who went about like a condemned man, evading his friends, and scarcely daring to look his parishioners in the face.
There had been talk of a memorial service in the parish church, but nothing came of it. Its abandonment was looked upon as a tacit recognition of a painful situation, which would only be augmented by a public parade of sorrow.
Ormsby treated Dora with the greatest consideration. No lover could have been more sympathetic—not a word about Dick Swinton or the seven thousand dollars. He laid himself out to please, and self-confidence made him almost gay—if gaiety could ever be associated with a man so somber and proud. The colonel persisted in throwing his daughter and the banker together in a most marked fashion, and Ormsby was at much pains to ignore the father’s blundering diplomacy.
As a result of his skilled tactics, Dora had ceased to shrink away from him—because she no longer feared that he would make love to her. She laughed at her father’s insinuations, because it was easier to laugh than to go away and cry. She put a brave face on things—for Dick’s sake. She did not want it to be thought that he had spread around more ruin and misery than already stood to his credit at the 197 rectory. Pride played its part. She supposed Ormsby understood that the idea of his being a lover was absurd. In this, she was rudely awakened one evening after the banker had dined at the house.
The colonel pleaded letters to write, and begged Dora to play a little and entertain their guest.
“Ormsby loves a cigarette over the fire, Dora, and he’s fond of music. I shall be able to hear you up in the study.”
Ormsby added his entreaties, and the colonel left them alone.
Dora was in a black evening-gown. It heightened the pallor of her skin, and made her look extremely slender and tall. Ormsby, whose clothes always fitted him like a uniform, looked his best in evening dress, with his black hair and dark eyes. His haughty bearing and stern, handsome features went well with the severe lines of his conventional attire. The colonel paused at the door before going out, and looked at the two on whom his hopes were now centred—Ormsby standing on the hearth-rug, straight as a dart, and Dora offering him the cigarette-box with a natural, sweet grace that was instinctive with her. He nodded in approval as he looked. Dora was an unfailing joy to him. She pleased his eye as she might have pleased a lover. He was proud of her, too, of her fearlessness, her 198 tact, her womanliness, and, above all, her air of breeding. She certainly looked charming to-night, a fitting châtelaine for the noblest mansion.
As the colonel remained in the doorway, still staring, Dora turned her head with a smile.
“What are you looking at, father?”