She thought of him quite a number of times before the evening was over. In her thinking there was no disloyalty to her love nor to her vows: but with all the glowing prospects for a round of gayety which the brilliance of this evening of her début promised for her first season, she felt a vague regret that she was not approaching the pleasures of it in the fullest freedom. Some quite well-defined notions of what was due her estate as a wife threatened to put certain limitations and restraints upon her. She half wished that that ceremony had been deferred—only deferred—till the time when she would be ready to enter upon the duties of her wedded life, assume its responsibilities and be obedient to the restrictions which very properly pertain to it.
Her husband, also, was giving some thought to the questions which the situation presented, with the difference that he had not thought of anything else since the evening began. With nothing to do since eight o'clock, and free to go home, he had stopped to see Helen in her coming-out glory.
His livery was a passport; and he divided the time of the reception—rather unequally, to be sure—between scraps of conversation with coming and going coachmen he knew and long periods of gazing upon Helen's loveliness through a broad low window of the East Room. He had never seen her in the role or in the conventional evening dress of womanhood, and the vision enchanted him. Crowning the piquancy of youth and freshness and élan in the girl, was the unstudied dignity and stateliness and graciousness of the woman; and the metamorphosis held him entranced.
He looked and looked and looked at her while every variant tremor of love and pride and impatience swept over his heart-strings. He saw the most notable men in America, men whose business was world-politics, bow in evident admiration before her beauty, and linger to barter persiflage for her smiles and airy speeches: and she was his wife.
He saw her receive the magnificent Chief of Staff of the Army, resplendent in the uniform of his exalted rank: her, the wife of Sergeant Graham of "the 10th." And that towering figure with the stamp of "Briton" in every massive line? Yes, Hayward recognized him: the English member of the Canadian Fisheries Commission—a lawyer of international repute, a belted earl—bending a grand head low in obeisance to a footman's wife—to his wife. The insolence of pride filled his heart for a minute. Then a twinge of doubt went through him: she would not be a footman's wife: she had decreed her husband must be an officer—oh, the bother and the worry of it—and the uncertainty! But she was his beyond escape, and if the worst came to—no, that would be disloyalty.... Look, who is that shaking hands with her now? Hal Lodge, by all that's Boston! Where did he come from, and what's he doing here? No matter, he's here. Look out, Hal, old boy, don't hold my wife's hand so long—nor gaze into her eyes so meaningly—I know your failing! My what a joke it would be if you fell in love with her!—it would be too funny. I owe it to old friendship to warn you, but I mustn't."
For the greater part of two hours Hayward watched the reception. He saw the last man presented.
"Yes, I know you, too," he thought. "You made that infernal speech in the Senate last year—said some good things for us, too, but on the whole it was damnable.... I'll excuse you from talking to my wife, you race-proud bigot! You needn't try any of your 'ardent Southerner' on her.... Keep off the grass. She belongs to me. She is mine—mine, curse you! and all your raving speeches can't take her away from me! ... Oh, well, talk on—yes, talk on to her. I wish to heaven you would fall in love with her! That would be quite the most delicious dispensation of fate that could ever come to me—it would be too good, too good to hope for—to have you hopelessly in love with my wife! ... Oh, you beauty, how can any man resist you!"
On the other side of the house Rutledge afterward swung past the footman's window in several dances with Elise.
"Oh," growled Hayward at last, "it's my brother-in-law you aspire to be! Well, I don't approve of that either. I'm surprised that your High-Mightiness condescends to my humble father-in-law's family anyway—and how they can suffer you to set foot in the house after your deliverances I can't see—I'd jump at the chance to pitch you out."
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