“She—well, she is a good sort, and I guess we understand each other, for she looked me straight in the face and said she hoped she’d have a chance some day to stand by me in return, and she didn’t slop over or call me ‘dear daughter,’ or say she’d be a mother to me, for any grown woman knows that there is only one who can be that.
“Consequently society and Charlie Ashton think that I’m speeding to California, while in reality I’ve flown to you for protection against the blues, and I want to stay a month if you will let me cook and do everything as you do—it is what I need. Who knows but I might turn farmer, or try love in a cottage myself some day.”
“A month, Lucy! oh, how good!” cried Brooke. “Yes, you shall do as we do,—you’ll really have to if business rushes as it has since we began,—but I’m afraid you will find it very dull, unless your fate dashes up in an automobile.”
“Dull! not a bit of it! Why, if I feel my flirting ability growing rusty, I can practise on the Cub’s elderly paragon, Mr. Stead, or try archaic sentiment on your big farmer man to console him for the sweetheart who has not yet materialized. From your ardent written descriptions of the landscapes about here, and the important places he always fills in them, it seems to me that he must be at least a straying Walther or a prince in disguise, seeking to be loved for himself alone.”
“Mr. Stead will probably be down to-night, so that you need lose no time in beginning,” Brooke made answer, flushing hotly. “We four have been playing whist a good deal, lately, and as I am not passionately fond of it, you shall take my hand. I think that you and he will prove pretty evenly matched in most things. As to my farmer, as you absurdly call him, you had better leave him alone,—it’s not worth while,—he might misunderstand, take you in earnest, and embarrass you.” Whereupon, after making the most cutting speech that Lucy had ever heard from her tongue, she turned about and went quietly downstairs, saying something about hurrying supper, as Lucy must be hungry as well as tired.
A new idea came to Lucy, born of her own teasing words, spoken wholly at random and in jest, and of Brooke’s flushing. She had always thought Brooke wholly an idealist in affairs of the heart, and that whatever emotion she had ever been able to detect had been brought out by the artist Lorenz during their Paris sojourn. When it had apparently ended in naught she had been both disappointed and glad, the latter especially after Adam Lawton’s failure, for after this she had desired Brooke, through matrimony, again to have the luxury and chance to enjoy her art that she thought her friend deserved.
When Charlie Ashton had drawn her attention to the resemblance to Brooke in the picture, “Eucharistia,” she had expected developments, but now that nearly six months had passed she regarded the thing as a mere artistic coincidence, the lingering in the man’s memory, perhaps, of a face for which he doubtless had a passing fancy.
Now a tangible possibility in the shape of Stead came into the foreground. Though Lucy had not seen the man, the Cub had given him a glowing recommendation. As to his age,—Lucy was a woman of experience,—fifty might mean many things, fatherly or otherwise, and the life of leisure he led implied that he had some independent property. Was he not always much at the house, and were not his books and various offerings scattered about everywhere, even at her first visit? Brooke had written of horseback rides in his company. Surely he did not come alone out of respect for Mrs. Lawton or anxiety about the Cub’s lessons. Why had Brooke blushed and been so resentful?
Lucy sprang up, and seizing a brush, began to work at her hair with a will, until the colour returned to her cheeks and the glossy dark locks wreathed her crown in a way to add a fascinating air of maturity to her arch face. Then, picking out the most dashing waist she had brought, having merely chosen her plainest clothing, she adjusted it over a long, flowing skirt and stood surveying herself for a moment, saying half aloud, “I will look at Milor Stead, widower; if he is a good possession for little Brooke, so be it, I stand aside; if not, I interfere!” and then a softened expression followed the one that Brooke’s semi-challenge had called forth, and she added, with a sigh, “How I wish Brooke could have some one’s whole, first, fresh love, be he rich or poor! She would keep it and live and die for it, and not mar it with a selfish thought. I wonder if Charlie is right and that Tom Brownell is trying to avoid me? Bah! but it is really a handicap for a woman to have a rich father; the money lures those she dislikes, and gives the others blind staggers, and they bolt in the wrong direction.”
Two minutes later, Lucy, wholly radiant, was pushing Adam Lawton’s chair in to supper, and insisting that she was sure that he recognized her, even though he could not speak her name, while the Cub changed seats so as to be next her at table, and Pam insisted upon sharing the somewhat narrow chair by wedging herself between Lucy and the straight, high back.