“No, I don’t think she knows any of them well. Aunt Flora doesn’t encourage any neighbourliness exactly. No, it was young Du Spain,” David said.
“Frank du Spain!”
“It would appear that it was love at first sight with him.”
Sylvia stared a moment; hot colour in her face.
“I don’t believe it!” she said, finally.
“Oh, it was honest and above-board enough. That was the very point of her speaking to me as she did,” David assured her, half amused and half serious. “It seems he spoke to her at the dance——”
“He must be twenty!” Sylvia broke in, impatiently.
“Twenty-four, he says. I don’t imagine,” David said, leniently, “that he had any immediate hopes, or indeed plans. But he assured her that he was free, and that his father was only too anxious to have him settle down; he said that his mother would ask her to visit them—at Lake Forest, I believe, this summer. He wanted a promise of some sort—he was in an absolute fever of excitement and eagerness when he left—almost wrenched my hand off!”
“David, you didn’t——But it’s all too absurd! You didn’t encourage them in this sort of nonsense?”
“Them? My dear Sylvia, you couldn’t have disposed of an unwelcome suitor more calmly yourself than Gay did!” said David. “She told him, it appears, that she was very much honoured, and she really liked him, but he please wasn’t to say anything more about it for months, until after midsummer, in short. She only told me because he insisted that somebody—anybody—be informed that he never would change, and was in earnest, and all that. And he wants to correspond, and she felt that she ought to speak to Aunt Flora about that.”