“No, I wouldn’t ask that; I’d only ask her to let me care for her. I think most men expect too much from their wives,” said George. “I don’t think they’ve got the right to ask it. And I don’t think a man has any right to marry until he can give the lady all she ought to have—that’s my idea! If any beautiful young lady, as sweet as she was beautiful, did me the honor of accepting my hand,”—Mr. Sutton’s voice faltered with honest emotion,—“I’d spend my life trying to make her happy, I would indeed, Miss Dosia. I’d take her wherever she wanted to go, as far as my means would afford; she should have anything I could get for her.”
“I think you are the very kindest man I have ever known,” said Dosia, with sincerity, touched by his earnestness, though with a far-off, outside sort of feeling that the whole thing was happening in a book. Her vivid imagination was alluringly at work. In many novels which she had read the real hero was the other man, whom no one noticed at first, and who seemed to be prosaic, even uncouth and stupid, when confronted with his fascinating rival, yet who turned out to be permanently true and unselfish and omnisciently kind, the possessor, in spite of his uninspiring exterior, of all the sterling qualities of love—in short, “John,” the honest, patient, constant “John” of fiction. His affection for the maiden might be of so high a nature that he would not even claim her as a wife after marriage until she had learned truly to love him, which of course she always did. If Mr. Sutton were really “John”—Dosia half-freakishly cast a swift inventorial side-glance at the gentleman.
The next moment they turned into the highroad, and a rippling smile overspread her face.
“Here’s the very lady for you now,” she remarked flippantly, as Ada Snow, prayer-book in hand, came into view at the crossing against a dark cloud in the background, on her way to a friend’s house from service at the little mission chapel on the hill. Ada’s cheeks took on a not unbecoming flush, her eyes drooped modestly beneath Mr. Sutton’s glance,—a maidenly tribute to masculine superiority,—before she went down the side-road.
Mr. Sutton’s face reddened also. “Now, Miss Dosia! Miss Ada may be very charming, but I wouldn’t marry Miss Ada if she were the only girl left in the world. I give you my word I wouldn’t. You ought to know——”
“We’ll have to hurry, or we’ll be caught in the rain,” interrupted Dosia, rushing ahead with a rapidity that made further conversation an affair of ineffective jerks, though she dreaded to get back to the house and be left alone to the numb dreariness of her thoughts. Justin and Lois were gathering up the rugs and sofa-pillows as the two reached the piazza, to take them in from the blackly advancing storm. Lois greeted Mr. Sutton with unusual cordiality; perhaps she also dreaded the accustomed dead level.
“Do come in, you’ll be caught in the rain if you go on. Can’t you stay to a Sunday night’s tea with us?”
“Oh, do,” urged Dosia, disregarding the delighted fervor of his gaze. Lois’ hospitality, never her strong point, had been much in abeyance lately; to have a fourth at the table would be a blessed relief. She felt a new tie with Mr. Sutton—they both sympathized with Lawson, believed in him!
She ran up-stairs to change her walking-suit for a soft little round-necked summer gown of pinkish tint, made at Mrs. Leverich’s, which somehow made her pale little face and fair, curling hair look like a cameo. When she came down again, she ensconced herself in one corner of the small spindle sofa, to which Zaidee instantly gravitated, her red lips parted over her little white teeth in a smile of comfort as she cuddled within Dosia’s half-bare round white arm, while Mr. Sutton, drawing his chair up very close, leaned over Dosia with eyes for nobody else, his round face getting brick-red at times with suppressed emotion, though he tried to keep up his part in an amiable if desultory conversation. Lois reclined languidly in an easy-chair, and Justin alternately played with and scolded the irrepressible Redge, in the intervals of discourse.
Through the long open windows they watched the sky, which seemed to darken or grow light as fitfully, in the progress of the oncoming storm; the wind lifted the vines on the piazza and flapped them down again; the trees bent in straightly slanting lines, with foam-tossing of green and white from the maples; still it did not rain. Presently from where Dosia sat she caught sight of a passer-by on the other side of the street—a tall, straight, well-set-up figure with the easy, erect carriage of a soldier. He stopped suddenly when he was opposite the house, looked over at it, and seemed to hesitate; then he moved on hastily, only to stop the next instant and hesitate once more. This time he crossed over with a quick, decided step.