Jean was touched and coming over to her father, put her arms around him saying: “Can’t you see, Father dear, that the letter he sent to you was the only one which a gentleman could write under the circumstances.”
“Perhaps so, perhaps,” answered Mr. Cameron. “And anyhow,” he went on rather weakly, “I have promised Baird, and Jean, I want you to see more of him. He is, I think, of all the men whom I know, the best and the most trustworthy. He told me that some time ago you refused to marry him.”
“Yes,” said Jean.
“Have you ever changed at all? Do you not like him better than you did? He is the man of all others whom I should rather see you marry.”
“I always liked him and I like him better than ever now,” replied Jean, with her usual frankness. “Only it would take me at least a week to fall in love with him,” she added laughing, as she kissed her father and bade him good night.
That evening she sat up until it was late, thinking. She had begun to see life in the West rather differently since her first rose-colored impressions. She was beginning to realize the facts that her father had quoted to her. The shoddiness of that life had begun to make itself felt. She had believed in Loring with all the trust to which a reserved nature yields itself when it becomes impetuous, and his complete failure had been a deep shock to her. She had not forgotten him, however, though, had she analyzed her thoughts, she would have been puzzled to know why he had not passed from her memory. Now that he was to be brought into her life again, her thought of him grew deeper and more personal. She opened her trunk and drew out of it her journal of the past year. For an hour she sat reading over the pages, and there were certain pages which she reread. When she closed the book it was close to midnight. She sat staring out of the window, thinking, wondering. The light in her eyes was like the harbor lights veiled by night mist to the mariner homeward bound,—now flashing clear and lambent, now dim, brilliant with the seaward flash or soft in the afterglow.
At length she rose as one tired of thinking; but as she brushed out the long waves of her hair she hummed softly the old refrain:
“Young Frank is chief of Errington
And lord o’ Langly Dale—
His step is first in peaceful ha’