“And—and—” continued Jacqueline with a sly, half-laughing glance, “we will meet Major Throckmorton again.”
“Go to bed, Jacqueline,” replied Judith in the soft, composed voice that invariably crushed Jacqueline.
Next morning General Temple showed the most unqualified delight at Mrs. Temple’s capitulation. He considered it becoming, though, to make some slight protest against going to the party. He thought, perhaps, with his tendency to gout, it would scarcely be prudent to expose himself to the night air, and—er—to Kitty Sherrard’s chicken salad; and, besides, he really was not justified in postponing the drawings of some maps to illustrate the position of Temple’s Brigade at the battle of Chancellorsville; for, like all other dilettanti, General Temple’s work was always of present importance and admitted of no delay whatever.
Mrs. Temple did not smile at this, but treated it with great seriousness.
“Quite true, my dear; but now that I have promised Jacqueline, I can not disappoint her. You must go for her sake.”
“Rather let me say, my dear Jane, that I go for your sake—your wishes, my love, being of paramount importance.”
For a henpecked man, it was impossible to be more imposing or agreeable than General Temple. So on the night of the party he was promptly on hand, at eight o’clock, in his old-fashioned evening coat, the tails lined with white satin, and wearing a pair of large, white kid gloves.
Jacqueline and Judith soon appeared. Jacqueline, in her new white frock, looked her prettiest, albeit it showed her youthful thinness and all her half-grown angles. Judith’s beauty was of a sort that could stand the simplicity of her black gown that revealed her white neck, and, for the first time since her widowhood, she wore no cap over her red-brown hair. Delilah and Simon Peter yah-yahed and ki-yied over both of them.
“Dem little foots o’ Miss Jacky’s in de silk stockin’s ain’ no bigger ’n little Beverley’s, hardly, and Miss Judy she look like de Queen o’ Sheba,” delightedly remarked Delilah.
Judith could scarcely meet Mrs. Temple’s eyes. She felt inexplicably guilty. Mrs. Temple examined them critically, though, and the general was loftily complimentary.