Gail Holden smiled, pleasedly but composedly. She possessed that peculiar modesty of dignified reserve which challenges the respect of men.
“Oh, you would have no doubt done a great deal better than I did,” she replied graciously.
But Whitley Adams had administered a kick to Roderick’s heel, and was now pushing him aside with a muttered: “You never told me you had this flying start, you cunning dog. But it’s my turn now.” And he placed himself before Miss Holden, and was duly presented by Bragdon.
A moment later Whitley was engaging Gail in a sprightly conversation. Roderick turned to Barbara, only to find her appropriated by Ben Bragdon. And Barbara seemed mightily pleased with the young lawyer’s attentions—she was smiling, and her eyes were sparkling, as she listened to some anecdote he was telling. Roderick began to feel kind of lonesome. If there was going to be anyone “shot full of holes” because of attentions to the fair Miss Barbara, he was evidently not the man. He had said to Grant Jones that any association of his name with hers was “rank foolishness,” and humbly felt now the absolute truthfulness of the remark. He began to look around for Grant—he felt he was no ladies’ man, that he was out of his element in such a gathering. There were many strange faces; he knew only a few of those present.
But his roving glance again lighted and lingered on Gail Holden. Yes, she was beautiful, indeed, both in features and in figure. Tall, willowy, stately, obviously an athlete, with a North of Ireland suggestion in her dark fluffy hair and sapphire blue eyes and pink-rose cheeks. He had seen her riding the range, a study in brown serge with a big sombrero on her head, and he saw her now in the daintiest of evening costumes, a deep collar of old lace around her fair rounded neck, a few sprigs of lily of the valley in her corsage, a filigree silver buckle at the belt that embraced her lissom form. And as he gazed on this beauty of the hills, this splendid type of womanhood, there came back to him in memory the wistful little face—yes, by comparison the somewhat worn and faded face—of the “college widow” to whom his troth was plighted, for whom he had been fighting and was fighting now the battle of life, the prize of true love he was going to take back proudly to Uncle Allen Miller along with the fortune he was to win with his own brain and hands.
“By gad, it’s more than three weeks since Stella wrote to me,” he said to himself, angrily. Somehow he was glad to feel angry—relieved in mind to find even a meagre pitiful excuse for the disloyal comparison that had forced itself upon his mind.
But at this moment the music struck up, there was a general movement, and he found himself next to Dorothy Shields. Whitley had already sailed away with Miss Holden.
“Where is Grant?” asked Roderick.
“Not yet arrived,” replied Dorothy. “He warned me that he would be late.”
“Then perhaps I may have the privilege of the first waltz, as his best friend.”