Better go to sleep, Mell; tears cannot wash away stern facts, and what good would it do now, if he did love you?
The other guest has come; the one of whom Jerome had spoken. It is the Honorable Archibald Pendergast, who is middle-aged, well-fed, and somewhat portly, who has big round shoulders and a jolly way of looking at things, who bellows out his words with a broad accent, and says, Aw! aw! with tremendous effect; who wears his whiskers à la manière Anglaise, as befits a man proud of his British ancestry and his English ways. This great man’s marvellous wealth and honors, and incalculable influence in national councils, and stupendous grandeur of future prospects, carry everything before him—at the Bigge House, and everywhere else.
Adapting herself with versatile cleverness, to these prevailing conditions in her unaccustomed environment, Mell’s conception of modes and manners expanded day by day, and she began to see plainly a good many objects only dimly discerned before.
“I don’t think,” remarked she, quite innocently to Rube, the day after the great man’s advent, “that Mr. Devonhough admires the Senator as much as the rest of us.”
“I shouldn’t wonder!”
Rube looked knowing and laughed.
“If he was as badly stuck on you as he appears to be on Clara, I wouldn’t admire him either!”
“But,” said Mell, “is Jerome?”
“Yes, certainly. Didn’t you know that? I thought you did. They are in the same interesting predicament as ourselves. Only Clara won’t announce, because she wants to keep up to the last minute her good times with other men. I don’t see how Devonhough stands it, and I’m awfully glad you’re not that sort of a girl!”
“How long?” asked not-that-sort-of-a-girl, trying to steady her voice, trying to maintain her rôle of a disinterested inquirer.