Of all the young men she had known, Maude liked Jack Heyford the best. She had thought him a little awkward and rusty when she first saw him at Oakwood, but had recognized through all the genuine worth and goodness of the man, and felt that he was true as steel. He was greatly improved since that time, and Maude was not unconscious of the attention she was attracting as she sauntered slowly on with the handsome stranger at her side. Edna saw them coming.
Indeed, she had watched all the morning for Jack, for she knew he was to have reached the Mountain House the night before, and that he would call on Miss Somerton that morning, and be introduced to her; and her conscience smote her for the part she was acting.
“If Uncle Phil was not so foolish about it, I should tell Maude at once,” she thought, as after Maude’s departure for a walk she made her toilet, in expectation of Jack Heyford’s call.
She had schooled herself so well that when at last Jack came and was presented to her, she received him without the least sign that this was not their first meeting; and Maude, who watched them curiously, felt chagrined and disappointed that neither manifested the slightest token of recognition, but met as entire strangers.
“It’s funny, when I am so sure,” she thought; and for several days she lived in a constant fever of excitement and perplexity.
Regularly each day Jack came to the cottage, and stayed so long that Becky suspected him to be “Miss Maude’s beau;” while Ruth Gardner, who was there frequently to help make up the game of croquet, interpreted his manner differently, and guessed that while he jested with and teased Miss Somerton, his preference was for Edna, who was evidently bent upon not encouraging him in the least, or giving him a chance to speak.
But Jack had his chance at last, on a morning when Maude and Ruth, with Maria Belknap and the Unitarian minister, were playing croquet upon the lawn behind the farm-house, and Edna was sitting alone on the stoop of the front door. Uncle Phil was gone, and as Aunt Becky was busy with her dinner in the kitchen, there was nothing in the way, and Jack told his story in that frank, outspoken way which characterized all he did. It was not like Charlie’s wooing; it lacked the impetuous, boyish fire which refused to be denied, and yet Edna knew that the love offered to her now was worth far more than Charlie’s love had been; that with Jack Heyford she should rest secure, knowing that no shadow of wrong had ever soiled his garments. And for a moment she hesitated, and thought of Annie, whom she loved, and looked up into the honest eyes regarding her so eagerly, and coming gradually to have a sorry, anxious expression as she did not answer.
“Won’t you speak to me, Edna?” he said. “Won’t you answer me?”
“Oh, Mr. Heyford,” she cried at last. “I am so sorry you have told me this, for I don’t believe I can say yes, at least not now. Give me till to-morrow, and then if I find that I can be to you what your wife ought to be, I will.”
Jack did not press her further, and when the croquet party came round from the lawn, they found Edna sitting there alone, and Mr. Heyford gone back to the Mountain House.