“Do you mean, am I in love with her? I am.”
“Are you going to marry her?”
“God knows.”
She looked up at him in surprise. “What makes you say it that way? Has she told you she didn’t care?”
“She has told me that she does care. But do you think, Janey, that I’m going to take her money?”
He patted her on the cheek and was off. She went to the top of the terrace and watched him ride away. Then she walked in the little shaded grove behind the house. Merrymaid followed her and the much-matured kitten. There was a carpet underfoot of pine needles and of fragrant young growth. Several of her old hens scratched in the rich mould—and their broods of tiny chicks answering the urgent mother-cry were like bits of yellow down blown before a breeze.
Jane picked a spray of princess-pine and stuck it in her blouse. Oh, what an adorable world! Her world. Could there be anything better that Frederick Towne could give her?
Baldy’s words rang in her ears—“Do you think I am going to take her money?”
Yet she was taking Frederick Towne’s money. She wished it had not been necessary. Each day it seemed to her that the thought burned deeper: she was under obligations to her lover that could be repaid only by marriage. And they were to be married in June.
Yet why should the thought burn? She loved him. Not, perhaps, as Baldy loved Edith. But there were respect and admiration, yes, and when she was with him, she felt his charm, she was carried along on the whirling stream of his own adoration and tenderness.