He now laughed outright. But she paid no attention to his gayety, going on in a way to have troubled him had he been less selfishly happy at the moment, "If you know this so well, Jack, you will never cease to love me, if ever love comes to change my own world, the same as it has yours? No matter what you may feel is wrong about it, you will not blame me?"
"Why, Dot, little girl, whatever are you dreaming about,—what should make you talk in this way?" And he looked at her with real anxiety.
But she only laughed, and passing her hand across her eyes, answered nervously, "I don't know, Jack,—I was but thinking on future possibilities."
"Rather upon the most remote impossibilities," he said laughingly. "But come, child, think no more of anything but this,—that 't is high time for you to put on your cloak and come to see your brother take unto himself a wife, who is to be your own dear sister."
"I am glad it is Mary Broughton," Dorothy said quietly, as she took her cloak from a chair.
"So am I," he laughed, as he wrapped the warm garment about her, shutting away all her pink sweetness with its heavy folds. Then, while he helped her to draw the hood over her curly head, "What if it were Polly Chine, now?"
"Then," she answered with an odd smile, "you would have to fight Hugh Knollys."
They were passing through the door, and he said with a keen glance at her, "I've good cause to know better than that, Dot."
But she gave no heed to this, and they joined the others outside.
The old family sleigh moved sedately along the hard, snow-packed road, the moon making a shadowy, grotesque mass of it along the high drifts, while Leet, enveloped in furs, sat soberly erect, full of the importance now attaching to him.