Jack felt a queer tightening about his lower jaw, and one heart-throb, apparently in his throat, as he entered Aunt Carrie's reception-room. Then, as with one glance he swept Rose from the crown of her head to the hem of her dress, a hot, rushing wave of indignant feeling mastered him--he knew he had staked his all (so a man at twenty-two is apt to think) and lost. He braced himself, mentally and physically. He was n't going to show the white-feather--not he.
But Rose--Rose was mystifying, captivating, cordial, merry, and altogether charming. She knocked out all Jack's calculations as to life, love, women, girls in general, and one girl in particular, at one fell swoop. He was brought, necessarily, into unstable equilibrium, so far as his feelings were concerned--his head he was obliged to keep level on account of the various figures. Several other heads were variously askew, and would have been turned, likewise, for good and all, had the wearer of her mother's India-mull wedding-dress been possessed of a fortune.
Rose developed social powers that evening that furnished food for conversation for Aunt Carrie and Mr. Clyde, who watched her with pride and pleasure. She was evidently enjoying herself thoroughly, and her enjoyment proved contagious.
"After all," said Jack as, between figures, he found opportunity for a whispered word or two; "this is n't half so fine a dance as the one in the barn, last September."
"Why, that's just what I was thinking, myself, that very minute!"
"You were?"
"Yes."
The brown eyes and the blue ones met with such evidence of a perfect understanding, that Jack failed to see Maude Seaton, who had approached him for the purpose of taking him out in the four-in-hand.
"Oh, I beg your pardon," said Jack, starting to his feet, "it's the 'four-in-hand.'"
"Yes, and I think you 'll have to be put into the traces again," she said, with a meaning smile.