"You know," she said calmly, "that I wouldn't really do such a thing—even to have what I care for so much.... And yet—if a woman is tired, hopeless, alone, isn't marrying some man a help to her? Can't she stand the passing years better? Doesn't it give her some respite from the eternal pain—here"—she laid a slim hand on her breast—"doesn't it give her something to live for, especially if children should come? I don't know, Silvie; I ask you because I'm tired and confused with the pain of it."
"My darling!"
She dropped her head on Silvette's shoulder for a moment; then, as the maid knocked, lifted it calmly and bade her come in.
That night at dinner she was very gay—a charming, sparkling, bewildering creature. Through and through Colonel Curmew shot intermittent pangs of jealousy and doubt, mercifully assuaged by hope; through and through Scott Wallace her blue eyes seemed to penetrate, exposing to her laughing gaze his youthful and very susceptible heart.
"That night at dinner she was very gay—a charming, sparkling, bewildering creature."
"Certainly I'm bowled over," he admitted cheerfully to himself. "She is the cunnin'est thing that ever missed a pheasant; but she's found me, all right, with both barrels, and the sky's full of feathers, and I'm on the sod, kickin'."
Me managed to tell her so that evening, in language sportsmanlike and picturesque, before they cut for partners at auction. She was standing on the stairs, two steps up; he below her, with his handsome face lifted.
"All you've got to do is to send your dogs forward, and retrieve me, Diana. I'm grassed in the open in plain sight."
"Suppose I should take you up, Scott?"