“But till that happens—and please God it may never happen—we may dismiss the whole thing from our minds,” said Morland, reassuringly. “Jenny will want for nothing, and want nothing. Do you think if there were any melodramatic villainy on my conscience I would go and engage myself to marry Norma Hardacre?”
This was the final argument that sent the black care, desperately clinging with the points of its claws, into infinite space. Jimmie smiled again. Morland waved away the uncongenial topic and called for a small bottle of champagne on ice. A glass apiece, he said, to toast the engagement. Rightly, champagne was the wine of the morning.
“It is the morning sunshine itself distilled,” said Jimmie, lifting up his glass.
He went home on the top of an omnibus greatly cheered, convinced that, whatever had happened, Morland had done no grievous wrong. When Aline went to the studio to summon him to lunch, she found him busy upon the sketch portrait of Norma, and humming a tune—a habit of his when work was proceeding happily under his fingers. She looked over his shoulder critically.
“That's very good,” she condescended to remark. “Now that Miss Hardacre is engaged to Mr. King, why don't you ask her to come and sit?”
“Do you think it's a good likeness?” he asked, leaning back and regarding the picture.
“It is the best likeness you have ever got in a portrait,” replied Aline, truthfully.
“Then, wisest of infants, what reason could I have for asking Miss Hardacre to sit? Besides, I don't want her to know anything about it.”
Aline glowed with inspiration. Why should things the most distantly connected with somebody else's marriage so exhilarate the female heart?
“Is it going to be a wedding present, Jimmie?”