Then, too, Jane had what might be called old-fashioned domestic qualities. She kept her little house as spick and span as she kept herself. In winter everything was burnished and bright; in summer crisp curtains waved in the warm breeze; there were cool shadows within the clean, quiet rooms.
At the moment, Mrs. Follette was weighing seriously the fact of Jane as a wife for Evans. She was pretty as well as cheerful. Had good manners. Of course, in the old days, Evans would, inevitably, have looked higher. There had been plenty of rich girls eager to attract him. He had had unlimited invitations. Women had, in fact, quite run after him. Florence Preston had rather made a fool of herself. And Florence’s father had millions.
But now——? Mrs. Follette knew how little Evans had at the moment to offer. She hated to admit it, but the truth was evident. Watching the two young people, she decided that should Evans care for Jane, she would erect no barriers. As for Jane, marriage with Evans would be, in a way, a rise in the world. She would live at Castle Manor instead of at Sherwood Park.
The poem had reached a point where Mrs. Follette felt that she ought to protest. She was not quite sure that she approved of the situation it outlined. The verse of the moment, for example—Porphyro’s plea to the maid, old Angela:
“To lead him in close secrecy,
Even to Madelaine’s chamber and there hide
Him in a closet of such privacy,
That he might see her beauty unspy’d
And win, perhaps, that night, a peerless bride.”
Stripped of all its fine words, it was an impossible situation.