His dreamy eyes smiled across at her.
“Thank God!” she thought, answering his smile.
There was no dampness in the air; she aided him to the garden, where he resumed his crutches and hobbled as far as the wonderful bush that bore a single belated rose.
“In the South,” he said, under his breath, “there is no lack of these.… I think—I think all will be well in the South.”
He tired easily, and she helped him back to his study, where young Burleson presently found them, strolling in with his hands in the pockets of his dinner-jacket.
His exchange of greetings with Miss Elliott was quietly formal; with her father almost tender. It was one of the things she cared most for in him; and she walked to the veranda, leaving the two men alone—the man and the shadow of a man.
Once she heard laughter in the room behind her; and it surprised her, pacing the veranda there. Yet Burleson always brought a new anecdote to share with her father—and heretofore he had shared these with her, too. But now!—
Yet it was by her own choice she was alone there, pacing the moonlit porches.
The maid—their only servant—brought a decanter; she could hear the ring of the glasses, relics of better times.… And now better times were dawning again—brief, perhaps, for her father, yet welcome as Indian summer.
After a long while Burleson came to the door, and she looked up, startled.