After a while, though, a hint of the engagement got abroad in the county, and the people generally, who had never relaxed in the slightest degree their forbidding exterior to Throckmorton, now somewhat included the Temples in the ban. Throckmorton, engrossed with his own affairs, had ceased to care for himself, being quite content with the few people around him who took him into their homes. But he felt it acutely for Jacqueline, who told him, with childish cruelty, without thinking of the pang she inflicted, of the strange coolness that all at once seemed to have fallen between her and her acquaintances. And Judith was sure that Freke put notions of that kind and of every kind into the girl’s head. Once, after one of Freke’s daily visits—for, if anything, he came oftener than Throckmorton—Jacqueline said, quite disconsolately, to Judith:
“Freke says I shall never have any more girl friends after I am married. Throckmorton is too old; and, besides, the people in this county will never, never really recognize him.”
“This county is not all the world—and, Jacqueline, pray, pray don’t listen to anything Freke has to say.”
“I know you don’t like Freke.”
“I hate him.”
Judith, when she said this, looked so handsome and animated that Throckmorton, entering at that moment, paid her a pretty compliment, which she received first with so much confusion and then with so much haughtiness that Throckmorton was as completely puzzled as the night he offered to kiss her hand, and concluded that Judith was as freakish as all women are.
Among the smaller irritations which Throckmorton had to bear, at this strange time, was Jack’s sly rallying. Jack assumed his father to be a love-sick octogenarian. Anything less love-sick than Throckmorton’s simple and manly affection, or less suggestive of age than his alert and vigorous maturity, would be hard to find. But Jack had always possessed the power of tormenting his father where women were concerned—the natural penalty, perhaps, of having a son so little younger than himself. Jack felt infinite respect for Jacqueline, and never once indulged in a joke calculated to really rouse Throckmorton; but some occasions were too good for him to spare the major. Such conversations as these were frequent:
“Major, are you going over to Barn Elms this evening?”
“No, I was there this morning.”
“I understand, sir, that two visits a day, when the young lady is in the immediate neighborhood, is the regulation thing.”