She laid a soft, white, dimpled hand, covered with glistening rings, in his outstretched palm, and gazed at him with coquettish plaintiveness. “It’s so lovely to see you again! Have you forgotten the night you kissed me?”
“I have thought of it daily,” he replied, giving her hand a hearty squeeze. They both laughed, and he took a surreptitious peep at her from under his eyelids. Marie Wakeman! Yes, truly, the same, and with the same old tricks. He had been married for nearly fourteen years, his children were half grown, he had long since given up youthful friskiness, but she was “at it” still. Why, she had been older than he when they were boy and girl; she must be for—He gazed at her soft, rounded, olive cheek, and quenched the thought.
“And you are very happy?” she pursued, with tender solicitude. “Nettie makes you a perfect wife, I suppose.”
“Perfect,” he assented gravely.
“And you haven’t missed me at all?”
“Can you ask?” It was the way in which all men spoke to Marie Wakeman, married or single, rich or poor, one with another. He laughed inwardly at his lapse into the expected tone. “I feel that I really breathe for the first time in years, now that I’m with you again. But how is it that you are not married?”
“What, after I had known you?” She gave him a reproachful glance. “And you were so cruel to me—as soon as you had made your little Nettie jealous you cared for me no longer. Look what I’ve declined to!” She indicated Jim Shore, leaning disconsolately against the cornice, chewing his moustache. “Now don’t give him your place unless you really want to; well, if you’re tired of me already—thank you ever so much, and I am proud of you to-night, Billy!”
Her lustrous eyes dwelt on him lingeringly as he left her; he smiled back into them. The lines around her mouth were a little hard; she reminded him indefinably of “She”; but she was a handsome woman, and he had enjoyed the encounter. The sight of her brought back so vividly the springtime of life; his hopes, the pangs of love, the joy that was his when Nettie was won; he felt an overpowering throb of tenderness for the wife at home who had been his early dream.
The last speeches were over, but Mr. William Belden’s triumph had not ended. As the acknowledged orator of the evening he had an ovation afterward; introductions and unlimited hand-shakings were in order.
He was asked to speak at a select political dinner the next week; to speak for the hospital fund; to speak for the higher education of woman. Led by a passing remark of Henry Belden’s to infer that his cousin was a whist player of parts, a prominent social magnate at once invited him to join the party at his house on one of their whist evenings.