Beauregard took his drubbing very well. He persuaded Sylvia to discuss his snobbery with him, and confessed the offence, and got up quite a fire of indignation against his banded relatives. Also he admitted that Harriet was too good for him, and that he had treated her like a cad. His speeches grew shorter and his manner more anxious, and Sylvia could see that his main thought was to get back and find out if he’d really lost Harriet.
So she called her friend up on the ’phone and announced, “He’s coming. Get on your prettiest dress without delay!” And then Sylvia went away and had a cry—first, because she had said such cruel things, and second, because her mother and father would be unhappy when they learned that Beauregard had escaped her.
An hour later Harriet called up to say that it was all over. “Did you accept him?” asked Sylvia.
To which the other answered, “You may trust me now, Sunny! You have made him into a soft dough, and I’ll knead him.” And sure enough, the new Beauregard Dabney sent his aunts and uncles flying, and followed Harriet to her summer home on the Gulf, and was hardly to be induced to wait for a conventional wedding—so eager was he to prove to himself and to Sylvia Castleman that he was really not a coward and a snob!
§ 31
It was in the midst of these adventures that Frank Shirley made his unexpected return from the North. On the day when he came to see her first, she naturally forgot about the existence of Beauregard Dabney—until Beauregard suddenly appeared and flew into a fit of jealousy. Then the imp of mischievousness got hold of Sylvia; she found herself wondering, “Would it be possible for Frank to be jealous of Beauregard? And if he was, how would he behave?”
“I knew it was dreadful then,” she told me, “but I couldn’t have helped it if I’d been risking my life. I had to see what Frank would do when he was jealous. I simply had to! It was a kind of insanity!”
So she tried it, and did not get much fun out of the experience. Frank was like an Indian in captivity; he could not be made to cry out under torture. He saw Beauregard’s position, and the unconcealed delight of the family; but he set his lips together and never gave a sign. Sylvia was going away for the summer, and Beauregard was talking about following her. There would be other suitors following her, no doubt—and new ones on the ground. Frank went home, and Sylvia did not hear from him for several days.
The Beauregard episode came to its appointed end, and then, in a letter to Frank, Sylvia mentioned that she had accomplished her purpose—the youth was engaged to Harriet. She thought this was explaining things. But how could Frank imagine the complications of the art of man-catching? Was Sylvia jesting with him, or trying to blind him, or apologizing to him, or what?
Sylvia kept putting off her start to the mountains—she could not bear to go while things were in such a state between them. But, while she was still hesitating, to her consternation she received a note from him saying that he was starting for Colorado. He had received a telegram that an aunt was dead; there were business matters to be attended to—some property which for his sisters’ sake could not be neglected. It was a cold, business-like note, with not a word of sorrow at parting; and Sylvia shed tears over it. Such is the irrationality of those in love, she had forgotten all about young Dabney or any other cause for doubt and unhappiness she might have given Frank. She thought that he, and he alone, had been unkind. And meantime, Frank had made up his mind that she was repenting of her engagement, and that it was his duty to make it easy for her to withdraw.