"I remember—and I could not imagine what brought you there. Yes, I sat down on a little cake and completely ruined my new porcelain-blue crépon—those waiters were very careless. Jolly faded it trying to take out the spot, and Mathilde had the greatest trouble to match the stuff. Alan, that man McLaughlin ought to be drummed out of polite society. The girl who would receive his attentions, let herself be talked of as likely to be his wife, cannot at heart be nice. When your dear mother and I were girls, we would not have looked at a big, vulgar creature like that, simply because he drove four-in-hand and was known to be rich. He would never have been asked to your grandfather's table. The materialism of this age takes, to me, no form more objectionable than the frank acceptance of such as he by women, old and young."
"Exactly," said Grove, grimly. "And when I met her at his side, she turned away from him one moment with a banal jest for me, and then quickly recaptured him, as if fearful he would escape. That, even my infatuation would not suffer. I turned on my heel, and, until I met her by chance on the boat to-day, have never seen her since."
"What can have been her reason for not going abroad?" said Mrs. Gervase, eagerly—a trifle suspiciously.
Grove was silent. In his ear sounded a dulcet voice, murmuring as the boat neared shore: "Perhaps, when you have consented to feel better friends with me, you will come and let me tell you why I stayed."
"You know, of course, that everybody says she is engaged? Her mother has hinted it to Mrs. Prettyman. If it be to this McLaughlin, then God knows you are well rid of her. If that be a blind, Alan dear,—you know it was always my way with you boys to scold about little things and let great ones pass,—I shan't add a word to your self-reproach; but I'll warn you—oh! I won't have the sin on my soul of letting you go unwarned. That woman, no matter whether she thinks she loves you or not, would make your misery. The parents of to-day don't trouble themselves to train up wives for the rank and file of our honest gentlemen. They create fine ladies, and look about for some one to take the expense of them off their hands. It is common talk that the Eliots have been strained to their utmost means to carry their girls from place to place, with the expectation of making rich marriages. The beauty and success of this one has apparently blinded those poor people to the consequences of their folly. The girl has been brought up to fancy herself of superior clay,—her habits are luxurious, her wants extravagant.
"More than all, for five years she has been fed on the flatteries of society. Personal praise is indispensable to her. She has lived and consorted with the most lavish entertainers of the most reckless society in our republic. Even supposing that you won her beauty and graces for your own, what on earth could you expect to offer her in exchange for what she would give up? My poor, dear lad, I'm talking platitudes, you think; but you and Tom and Louis shall not be allowed to wreck your futures upon such as Gladys Eliot, while I have breath to speak. I'm afraid I think all marriages a mistake for young men. I know they are, as we measure and value things, in what we call 'fashionable life.' Go out of it, by all means, if you can. To take her out of it you would find to be quite another matter. And now, after this long homily, I've one question to put. Answer it, if you like—if you think I've the right to ask it. After seeing her again to-day, do you feel there is danger in her proximity?"
"You have certainly torn sentiment to shreds," said Alan, getting up from amid his cushions and beginning to stride up and down the long veranda. Mrs. Gervase watched him without further speech. That he did not again allude to the subject sent her to bed with keen anxiety and a renewed regret that Mr. Gervase had not taken her advice about buying that point of land before it fell into the hands of the Prettymans.
For the two or three days following his arrival at Stoneacres, Grove made no attempt to see his neighbor's guest. Once, indeed, they encountered her on horseback, while driving together in a family party in the buckboard, behind the cobs. Mr. Gervase, who, in his later enthusiasm about the Junius correspondence, had forgotten his charmer, asked who was that stunning, pretty girl, and, on being rallied by his wife, declared his poor sight was at fault, and that he meant to call on the Prettymans that very day; but Saturday brought with it the appointed dinner, without other overture from Stoneacres than cards left by Mrs. Gervase when the ladies were from home.
Grove was hardly surprised when, on descending to the drawing-room in evening clothes, he found only that very colorless pair of Prettymans. Miss Eliot, it was alleged, was suffering from too long a ride in the hot sun of the afternoon to make the effort to come out. He saw in the countenance of his aunt a look of relief, which she at once proceeded to mask by unusual suavity to mankind in general, her flattered guests in particular.
"The worst is over; I am safe," Grove decided. "But I like her all the better for that womanly holding back. Now, to live down my folly as best I can."