“A four-handed game was so much nicer,” she said; “and Mr. Heyford and Uncle Phil were so fairly matched,” and she looked so jaunty in her short, coquettish dress, and pleaded so skilfully, that Jack took the offered mallet, and, sad as was his heart just then, he found a space in which to think how pretty Miss Somerton was, and how gracefully she managed her mallet, and how small and well-shaped was the little foot she poised so skilfully upon the balls when bent upon croqueting.
Maude Somerton was very beautiful, and there was a power in her sunny blue eyes, and a fascination in her coaxing, winning ways, which few men could resist. Even sturdy Uncle Phil felt their influence, and under the witching spell of her beauty did things for which, when he was alone, he called himself “a silly old fool, to be so carried away with a girl’s pranks.”
Maude sported the first short dress which had appeared in Rocky Point, and she looked so odd, and pretty withal, in her girlish costume of white, trimmed with a pale buff, and she wore such stylish gaiters, and showed them so much with their silken tassels, that Uncle Phil confessed again to a “curis feeling in his stomach,” and was not sure whether it was quite the thing for an old chap like him to let his eyes rest often on those little feet, and that trim, lithe form, which flitted so airily around the wickets, and made such havoc with the enemy’s balls. It surely was not well for a young man like Jack to look at her often, he decided, especially when arrayed in that short gown, which made her look so like a little girl, and showed her feet so plainly.
They had a merry game, and Jack was interested in spite of himself, and accepted Uncle Phil’s invitation to stay to dinner, and felt a queer little throb in his veins when Maude, acknowledging Edna and himself victors, insisted upon crowning them as such, and wove a wreath of myrtle for Edna’s hair, while for him she gathered a bouquet, and fastened it in his button-hole.
She had said to Edna, “I shall tell Mr. Heyford that I know your secret. I must talk to somebody about it.” And seizing the opportunity when Edna was in the house consulting with Becky about the dessert, she told him what she had discovered, and waxed so enthusiastic over “little Dot,” and arranged the bouquet in his button-hole a little more to her liking, and stood, with her glowing face and fragrant breath, so near to him, and did it all so innocently, that Jack began to wonder he had never before observed “how very beautiful Miss Somerton was, and what pleasant ways she had,” and when he went back to the Mountain House at night, his heart, though very sore and sad, was not utterly crushed and desolate.
He played croquet the next day and the next, sometimes with Edna for his partner, but oftener with Maude, who, being the champion player, undertook to teach him and correct some of his faults. He must not poke, nor stand behind, nor strike too hard, nor go after other balls when he could as well make his wicket first. And Jack tried to learn, and do his teacher justice, and became at last almost as interested in the game as Maude herself, whom he sometimes beat. And when at the end of his two weeks’ vacation he went back to his business in New York, he seemed much like himself, and Edna felt that he was bearing his disappointment bravely, and that in time life would be to him just what it had been before he thought of her.
Maude’s departure followed close upon Jack’s, and as she bade Edna good-by, she said, “I shall never rest, Dotty, till I see you at Leighton, where you belong. But I want you to go there first as Louise Overton. Take my word for it, you will succeed better so, with la mère, and possibly with le frère too. When they come home I am going to manage for you. See now if I don’t Adieu.”
CHAPTER XXVI.
AFTER ANOTHER YEAR.
Roy Leighton remained abroad little more than a year, and about the middle of July came back to his home on the river, which had never seemed so pleasant and attractive as on the summer afternoon when he drove through the well-kept grounds, and up to the side door where his servants were assembled to welcome him. Travelling had not greatly benefited his mother, who returned almost as much an invalid as when she went away, and to her ailments now added that of rapidly failing eyesight. There were films growing over both her eyes, so that she could only see her beautiful home indistinctly, and after greeting the domestics, she went at once to her room, while Roy repaired to the library, where he found several letters, which had come for him within the last few days. One was in Miss Jerusha Pepper’s handwriting, and Roy opened that first, and found, as he expected, that it inclosed one from Edna.