She looked really beautiful in her earnestness, although her cheeks were blotchy with tears. “And even our own wouldn’t believe in him—no one has but me,—and perhaps Loveday, but I didn’t know that.”
I saw Octavia press her hand tenderly under the table—but I knew she was feeling, with me, that there had been quite enough of our own affairs.
“I am sure he must be a most lovable young man,” said Miss Bocock politely. She looked a trifle disturbed, now, and I thought that the gold-thread legs of the stork that she was embroidering were a little wabbly. “Young men will have their little differences; only a trifling misunderstanding, in this case, I am sure.”
Ned Carruthers was looking at Estelle as if he had never seen her before. In fact, I think he had come in wrought to so high a tension by his experience at the race-course—by our Loveday’s preaching, of all queer things!—that he had not especially observed any of us, but had rather regarded us collectively as an audience upon which to pour out his pent-up feelings. He looked at her without a trace of the admiration which a young man naturally bestows upon a pretty girl, but with an abashed and downcast air, as before a Daniel come to judgment—with rather more reverence than I thought that Estelle with her tearful impetuosity really deserved.
“Honest, honorable and clean!” he repeated meditatively and almost solemnly. “That wouldn’t mean betting at a horse-race or—or giving another fellow away, would it? Well, I have turned over a new leaf—but—what a mess I have made of things, this afternoon!”
The conclusion was so boyish that we all laughed.
Miss Carruthers had recovered herself and tried to restore a light and merry tone to the conversation. But that was not easy. Miss Bocock asked to see the contents of Estelle’s portfolio and Peggy Carruthers pinned them up, in effective positions, all over the studio.
Now I did not feel at all sure about them; it seemed to me that they were queer. I wondered a little that none of the dealers would have her paintings. I still meant to hang one over the mantel in the spare bed-room, but the drawings didn’t look to me like other people’s. Peggy Carruthers praised them extravagantly, however. I suspected her of being a little insincere, from a kindly desire—very kindly under the circumstances—to soothe Estelle’s wounded feelings. Miss Bocock thought them very pretty, but criticized a little, preferring the artistic methods of her youth and quarreling with the “poster” style of her storks. Even embroidery had been invaded by the helter-skelter, touch-and-go fashion. For her part she liked finish.
She was cried down by the younger people but Ned Carruthers said ruefully:
“We seem fated to hurt you here, Miss Dupont.”