R. H. – A PORTRAIT
Not credulous, yet active in belief
That good is better than the worst is bad;
A generous courage mirrored in the glad
Challenging eyes, that gentle oft with grief
For honest woe – while lurking like a thief,
Peering around the corners, humor creeps,
Into the gravest matters pries and peeps,
Till grimmest face relaxes with relief;
A heart belovèd of the wiser gods
Grown weary of solemnity prolonged —
That snatches scraps of gladness while Fate nods,
Varying life’s prose with stories many-songed:
One who has faced the dark and naught denied —
Yet lives persistent on the brightest side.
Allan Munier.
THE FUTURE MRS. THORNTON
By Sarah Guernsey Bradley
From a worldly point of view there could be no question as to the wisdom and desirability of the match, and Miss Warren’s family was worldly to the core.
It had been a crushing blow to Mrs. Warren’s pride, and, incidentally, a blow in a vastly more material direction, that her two older daughters had made something of a mess of matrimony, pecuniarily speaking.
She was confessedly ambitious for Nancy – Nancy, the youngest, the cleverest, the fairest of the three. Position she always would have, being a Warren, but she wanted the girl to have all the other good things of this life, that for so many years had been unsatisfied desires. Not, of course, that she would want Nancy to marry for money, she assured herself virtuously; that, in addition to being an indirect violation of an article of the Decalogue, was so distinctly plebeian. But it would be so comfortable if Nancy’s affections could only be engaged in a direction where the coffers were not exactly empty. In other words, money would be no obstacle to perfect connubial bliss.
And think of the future which awaited Nancy if she would but say the word! Even the fondly cherished memory of the Warrens’ past glory dwindled into nothingness in comparison.
To be sure, Mr. James Thornton was not so young as he had been ten years ago – “What’s a man’s age? He must hurry more, that’s all,” Mrs. Warren was fond of quoting – nor, in point of girth, did he assume less aldermanic proportions as time rolled on, but there was such a golden lining to these small clouds of affliction, that he was very generally looked upon as an altogether desirable parti.
It must be admitted that, among other minor idiosyncrasies, Mr. James Thornton would now and then slip into the vernacular. Under great stress of feeling, in the heat of argument and the like, he had been known to break the Sixth Commandment in so far as the English of the king was concerned.
“You was,” “those kind,” “between you and I,” would slip out, but these variations from the strictly conventional were looked upon as little eccentricities in which a man whose fortune went far above the million mark could well afford to indulge.
“James is so droll,” the aristocratic Mrs. Warren would say comfortably, resolutely closing her eyes to the fact that James’ early environment, and not his sense of humor, was responsible for his occasional lapses. For James’ father, old Sid Thornton, as he was always called, could not have boasted even a bowing acquaintance with the very people who were now not only falling over each other in their mad anxiety to entertain his son, but were even more than willing to find that same son a suitable wife among their own fair daughters. Old Sid Thornton’s homely boy, Jim, running away to sea, and Mr. James Thornton, back to the old town with a fortune at his disposal, and living in a mansion that was the admiration and envy of the whole county, were two totally different entities.
Temptingly did the mothers with marriageable daughters display their wares. But of all the number, and many of them were passing fair, Mr. James Thornton cast longing eyes on only one, and that was Nancy Warren. Frankly, he wanted to get married, settle down, perhaps go into politics when he had time; he wanted a mistress for that beautiful house on the hill, some one who would know how to preside at his table and dispense his hospitality; some one, in short, who would know, instinctively, all the little niceties which were as a sealed book to him, and the tall, fair, thoroughbred Miss Warren seemed ideally fitted for the post.
Encouraged thereto by the tactful Mrs. Warren, James had poured into her eager ears the secrets of his honest soul, and Mrs. Warren had listened with a sweet and ready sympathy that had caused James quite to forget a certain stinging snubbing he had received from the selfsame lady, because once, back in the dark ages – before Nancy had opened her blue eyes on this naughty world – when he was a gawky, freckle-faced boy of sixteen, he had dared to walk home from church with Mildred, the eldest daughter of the house of Warren.
That was long before Mrs. Warren had felt poverty’s vicious pinch, and before her life had become one continual struggle to make both ends meet. Somehow, her point of view had changed since then – points of view will change when the howl of the wolf is heard in the near distance, and yet one must smile and smile before one’s little world – and, all other things being equal, Mr. James Thornton’s home, garish with gold and onyx, and fairly shrieking with bad tapestries and faulty paintings and ponderous furniture, seemed as promising and fair a haven as she could possibly find for the youngest and only remaining daughter of the house of Warren. As for any little jarring notes in the decorative scheme of the Thornton abode, Mrs. Warren knew that she could trust Nancy to change all that, if she were once established there as the bride of Mr. James Thornton.
Now, Nancy had her share of the contrary spirit, and although she did not look altogether unfavorably upon the wooing of the affluent James, she took very good care that her mother should not suspect her state of mind. Perhaps that one unforgettable summer, of which her mother only dimly dreamed, made her despise herself for her tacit acquiescence, and she salved her accusing conscience with some outward show of opposition.
“Mr. Thornton is most kind, but his hands are positively beefy, mother,” complained Nancy, one day, her short upper lip curling a bit scornfully. Mrs. Warren had just finished a long dissertation on the virtues of Mr. James Thornton, and, merely incidentally, of course, had touched on the great advantages that would accrue to the girl who should become his wife.
“You ought to know, my dear,” Mrs. Warren replied, blandly, “that the sun of South Africa has a rather” – Mrs. Warren’s broad a had a supercilious cadence – “toughening effect on the skin. Hands or no hands, he has more to recommend him than any man of your acquaintance.” Mrs. Warren refrained from adding in what respect. “He is very much taken with you. Let him slip through your fingers and he’ll be snapped up by some one else before you can say ‘Jack Robinson.’ Effie Paul” – Mrs. Warren began counting the pining ones on her fingers – “would give her old boots and shoes if she could annex him – she’s a calculating creature; I never liked her. Alice Wood needs only half a chance to throw herself at his feet just as she already has done at his head. Her conduct has been disgraceful.” Mrs. Warren sniffed the sniff of the virtuous and blameless. “There’s not a girl of your acquaintance who would not jump at the chance of becoming Mrs. James Thornton.”
“Did you ever read that story of Kipling’s where he says, ‘Regiments are like women – they will do anything for trinketry’?” inquired Nancy, calmly.
“Kipling may know a great deal about regiments, but he knows nothing about women,” said Mrs. Warren, severely. “I am surprised to hear a girl of your age advocating any such idea! I have a higher opinion of my sex, thank Heaven!” She assumed the air of an early Christian martyr.
“Well, I think they’re a pretty mercenary lot,” said Nancy, stolidly.
“Not at all. People sometimes have a proper sense of the eternal fitness of things,” her mother returned, with withering inconsistency. “Not, of course,” she added, hastily, “that I would consent to your marrying Mr. Thornton if you didn’t care for him.”
Nancy’s face was a study.
“I think too much of him for that.” Mrs. Warren threw her head back proudly.
“He’s a trifle unideal, mother; a bit different, you must admit,” Nancy laughed. “To begin with, he has a regular bay window.”
“Don’t be vulgar, Anne,” her mother said, sharply. “He inherits flesh.”
“Yes, I remember once hearing dad say that old Sid Thornton looked exactly like an inflated bullfrog,” Nancy laughed, wickedly.
“Your dear father had an unfortunate way of expressing himself.” Mrs. Warren drew herself up stiffly. “And I must say, my dear, that you are much more like poor, dear Charles than you are like me.” Mrs. Warren wiped away a tear, and Nancy wondered vaguely whether the tear was for her late and not too loudly lamented father or for the absence of her likeness to his relict.
The next moment Nancy, swiftly penitent, was at her mother’s side, and, taking the still wonderfully young face between her hands, said softly: “Kiss me, Marmee. I’m a brute, I know I am. I know what an awful struggle it has been to keep up appearances. I – I’m sick of it all, too. Only – only, I must think, that’s all. I must be perfectly sure – that I really care– for Mr. Thornton. Don’t say anything more now, dearie,” she pleaded, as her mother started to make some reply. “I’m going off to think.” And, kissing her mother tenderly, this strange little creature of varying moods and tenses went up to her own room to have it out with herself. It was the one place where Nancy Warren felt that she could be perfectly honest with her own soul, where all shams and insincerities could safely be laid aside without fear of that arch-tyrant of a small town, Mrs. Grundy.
She opened her window, and, sitting down on the floor in front of it, her head on the broad sill, gazed, with curiously mingled emotions, at the imposing pile of gray stone on the hill, where Mr. James Thornton lived and moved and had his being.
Down deep in her heart of hearts, Nancy Warren knew that she was far more like her mother than that very lovely and very conventional woman dreamed.
She was a luxury-loving soul – things that were mere accidents to other women were absolute necessities to her. With a longing that almost amounted to a passion, she craved jewels, good gowns, laces and all the other dear, delightful pomps and vanities of this world, which only a plethoric purse can procure.
She reveled in the violets and orchids which, so sure as the day dawned, came down from the Thornton conservatories for the greater adornment of the house of Warren.
The rides in the fastest machines in the county, the cross-country runs on Mr. James Thornton’s thoroughbred hunters, all these were as meat and drink to her.
Yes, Mr. James Thornton’s offer was certainly tempting. It meant that everything in the world for which she most cared would be hers except – but that was singularly out-of-date. Nobody really married for that any more. To be sure, her sisters had, but she could not see that they were glaringly happy. And Mr. James Thornton was a good soul – everybody admitted that. And yet – for an instant the gray stone building in the distance, bathed in the golden radiance of the setting sun, grew misty and blurred. She saw another sunset, all pink and green and soft, indefinite violet, and above the deep, sweet, ceaseless sound of a wondrously opalescent sea she heard a man’s voice ring clear and true with a love as eternal as that same changeless sea. She felt again that strange, sweet, unearthly happiness that comes to a woman once and once only. She buried her face in her hands to shut out the sight of that gray stone house on the hill, bathed in the significant, mocking, golden radiance of the setting sun. She heard again that man’s voice, crushed and broken with a dull, hopeless despair. She saw his face grow pale as death as he heard her words of cruel, worldly wisdom. She felt again that same bitter ache at the heart, that horrible, gnawing sense of irreparable loss, as she had voluntarily put out of her life “the only good in the world.”
“But we were too poor,” she cried, passionately, jumping to her feet and throwing her head back defiantly. “It would have been madness – for me.” She looked out of the window again at the gray stone house on the hill, and laughed mirthlessly.
Then she walked slowly away from the window, and stood irresolute for a moment, in the center of the room.
“This horrid, beastly poverty!” she burst out vehemently. “I’m sick of it all – of our wretched, miserable makeshifts. I’m tired, so tired, of everything. It will be such a rest.” She rushed excitedly to the door, and ran, with the air of one who knows delay is fraught with danger, downstairs to her mother’s room.
“Mother” – Mrs. Warren looked up fearfully, as she heard her daughter’s voice – “I have thought it all over.”
“Yes?” said Mrs. Warren, weakly. The reaction was almost too much for her after the half hour of sickening suspense.
“You must see Mr. Thornton when he comes to-night, for I have a splitting headache and I’m going to bed.” Her mother stared at her blankly. Was this the end of all her hopes? “To-day is Tuesday – tell him that I will give him my answer Friday night. And, mother” – her voice dropped in a half-ashamed way – “the answer will be yes.”
“My darling child” – Mrs. Warren took her daughter in her arms – “this is the very proudest and happiest moment of my life.”
“Yes, mother, I know,” Nancy freed herself from the clinging embrace. “I’m happy, awfully happy, too” – she said it as one would speak of the weather or some other deadly commonplace. “I think Mr. Thornton will make a model husband. And – and it’s an end to all our nasty little economies!”
“Anne, don’t be so material,” Mrs. Warren interrupted, in a shocked voice.
“I’m not, mother; only think” – Nancy’s eyes glistened – “no more velveteen masquerading as velvet, no more bargain-counter shoes and gloves, no more percaline petticoats with silk flounces, no more plain dresses because shirring and tucking take a few more yards; no more summers spent in close, cooped-up hall bedrooms in twelve-dollar-a-week hotels; grape-fruit every morning, and cream always!” She laughed half hysterically. “And Mr. Thornton is so good! It’s wonderful to be so happy, isn’t it, Marmee?”
Mrs. Warren looked at her apprehensively for a moment. “You’re sure,” she faltered – “you’re sure you’re doing it all without a regret for – for anybody, Nancy?”
Nancy’s nails went deep into the palms of her hands. “Without a regret, Marmee,” she smiled, brightly.
“And that you think you will be perfectly happy with James?”
“Perfectly,” said Nancy, evenly.
Mrs. Warren, reassured, was radiant. “My darling child,” she breathed, softly, “this means everything to me.”
“You’ll explain about the headache, won’t you, Marmee?” Nancy asked, moving hurriedly toward the door. She knew that she should scream if she stayed a moment longer in her mother’s presence.
“Yes, indeed, and I’m so sorry about the pain.” Her mother followed her to the door. “Take some – ”
“I have everything upstairs, thank you, mother. Good-night.”
“Good-night, my darling child.” Those kisses were the fondest her mother had ever given her. “How I wish that your poor dear father could know of our perfect happiness!”
Nancy passed out into the hall, closed the door behind her, and leaned for a moment against the wall. Mrs. Warren’s idea of perfect happiness would have received a severe shock, could she have heard Nancy murmur, brokenly: “Dear old dad! Pray Heaven you don’t know that your little Nance is a miserable, mercenary coward!”
There is a certain sense of relief that follows the consummation of a long-delayed decision, no matter how inherently distasteful that decision may be, and Nancy’s first feeling when she awoke on the following morning was one of thankfulness that the preliminary step had been taken.
All burdens seem lighter, everything takes a different hue, in the morning when the sun is shining and the birds are singing, and after the months of sickening indecision Nancy experienced such a delightful sense of rest, such a freedom from suspense, that she actually laughed aloud as she said to herself: “Oh, I guess perhaps it’s not going to be so bad, after all!”
By the time that Mr. James Thornton’s daily offering of violets and orchids had arrived, she had about decided that she was a rather levelheaded young woman, and when, an hour after that, she found herself seated beside the devoted James, in his glaringly resplendent automobile, skimming along at an exhilarating pace over a fine stretch of country road, she had come to the conclusion that that arch-type of female foolishness, the Virgin with the Unfilled Lamp, was wisdom incarnate compared to the woman who deliberately throws aside the goods the gods provide her. Oh, yes, Nancy was fast becoming the more worthy daughter of a worthy mother!
James Thornton, reassured by what Mrs. Warren had delicately hinted to him the evening before, exulted in Nancy’s buoyant spirits. He had never seen her so attractive. She chattered away merrily, laughed at his weighty jokes and his more or less pointless stories, and even forgot to be angry when for one brief, fleeting instant his massive hand closed over her slim, aristocratic one. It seemed too good to be true that this fascinating bit of femininity was soon to be his.
When they finally returned to the Warrens’ modest house, the wily chauffeur, looking after them as they walked along the nasturtium-bordered path that led to the porch, winked the wink of one on the inside, and smiled broadly as he murmured: “She’s a crackajack! And if there ain’t somethin’ doin’ this time, I’ll eat my goggles!”
“Don’t you think, mother,” said Nancy, an hour or so later – they were sitting in Nancy’s room, Mrs. Warren, with unusual condescension, having come up for a little chat – “that it would have been rather nicer to have had dinner here Friday night, the eventful Friday night” – a queer little tremor ran over her – “instead of at Mr. Thornton’s?”
“Why, no,” said Mrs. Warren, complacently; “I think it will make everything easier for James if we are up there. You know he is inclined to be diffident, Nancy. A man always appears to better advantage in his own house.”
“And of course that is the only thing to be considered.” Nancy smiled half bitterly. She had lost a little of the buoyancy of a few hours before.
“Why, of course, my dear,” Mrs. Warren began, hastily, “if you prefer to – ?”
“Oh, no, let it go at that,” returned Nancy, carelessly. “It will be all the same at the end of a lifetime.” She shrugged her shoulders as she spoke. “What shall I wear, mother?” she asked the next moment, with an entire change of manner. “My white, virginal simplicity and all that sort of rot; my shabby little yellow, or the scarlet? Those are my ‘devilish all,’ you know.”
“The white, by all means, Nancy.” Mrs. Warren’s tone was impressive; and for reasons of her own she chose to ignore the slang.
“Pink rose in the hair, I suppose, a Janice Meredith curl, bobbing on my neck and nearly scratching the life out of me, a few visibly invisible little pink ribbons, and any other ‘parlor tricks’ I happen to know – ”
“Anne!” Her mother frowned angrily.
“Then be led into the conservatory” – Nancy paid no attention to the interruption – “have the moonlight turned on. Horrors, think of that artificial moonlight!” Nancy shuddered. “And then say yes! Heavens! I hope I shan’t say yes until it’s time. It would be awful to miscue at that stage of the game!”
Mrs. Warren rose abruptly from her chair, and without a word started for the door, quivering with indignation.
“There! I’ve been a brute again,” cried Nancy, penitently, dashing after her mother.
“Yes, I think you have,” blazed Mrs. Warren.
“I was only fooling, dearie; it’s all going to be lovely, and I’m going into that conservatory just as valiantly as the Rough Riders charged up old San Juan! Only, Marmee, don’t ask me to wear white – that would be too absurd! Frankly, I’m susceptible to color. You’ve heard about the little boy who whistled in the dark to keep his courage up?” Mrs. Warren smiled through her tears. “Well, I’m going to wear my red – red is cheerful, and not too innocent, and – and courageous – I mean,” Nancy explained, hastily, as she caught her mother’s look of wonder. “It always requires some courage for a girl to say she will marry a man, even when the circumstances are as – as happy as they are in this case. Didn’t you feel just a little bit queer when you told dad you’d marry him?”
“Why, yes, I suppose I did,” said Mrs. Warren, half doubtfully.
“Well, then,” said Nancy, logically, “you can understand just what I mean. I’ve a scrap of lace” – reverting to the burning question – “that I’m going to hunt up, that will freshen the red a lot, and some day, Marmee” – she took her mother’s face between her cool, slim hands, and laughed with a fine assumption of gayety – “we’ll have such closetfuls of dainty, bewitching ‘creations’ that we’ll quite forget we ever envied Mother Eve because she didn’t have to rack her brains about what to wear.”
Mrs. Warren laughed. Her indignation had vanished. Nancy had a winsome way with her when she chose that was irresistible to the older woman.
“Now you go take a nice little nap, Marmee” – she kissed her mother lightly on the forehead – “while the future Mrs. James Thornton ferrets out the scrap of lace which is to be the pièce de résistance of Juliet’s costume when she goes to meet her portly Romeo!” She laughed merrily, and with a sweeping courtesy ushered her mother out of the room.
As soon as the door had closed behind Mrs. Warren, Nancy, singing lustily, yet with a certain nervousness, as if to drown all power of thought, bustled about the room, peering into topsy-turvy bureau drawers and ransacking inconsequent-looking boxes, with a half-feverish energy, as though upon the unearthing of that particular piece of lace depended her hopes of heaven.
It seemed to be an elusive commodity, that scrap of rose-point; for twenty minutes’ patient search failed utterly to bring it to the light of day.
Suddenly, Nancy espied a big, important-looking black walnut box on the floor of her closet, half hidden by a well-worn party coat which depended from the hook just above it. It was a mysterious-looking box, delightfully suggestive of old love letters and tender fooleries of that sort, or would have been, had it not been the property of an up-to-date, worldly-wise young woman who knew better than to save from the flames such sources of delicious torment, such instruments of exquisite torture.
In an instant Nancy had dragged the box to the door of the closet, and was down on her knees in front of it, going through its contents with ferret-like eagerness.
Yes! Her search was at last rewarded! For there, down under a pair of white satin dancing slippers, in provokingly easy view, lay the much desired finery.
She put her hand under the slippers to draw it from its resting place, and as she felt the lace slip easily as though across some smooth surface, looked with idle curiosity down into the box. Instantly a sharp little cry rang through the room, and she withdrew her hand as swiftly as though she had unearthed a nest of rattlers. Her face was ashen, her breath came quick and short.
“Oh, I didn’t know it was there!” she gasped. “I had forgotten all about it. I thought it had been destroyed with all the rest. Why is it left to torment me now, now, now?” she cried, angrily. Then, with a swift revulsion of feeling, she murmured, brokenly: “Oh, Boy, Boy, is there no escaping you? No forgetting you just when I am trying to so hard?”
She sat very still for a moment. Then she put her hand into the box again and drew out, not the precious scrap of rose-point – that, to her, was as though it had never been – not a blurred, tear-stained love letter, not a bunch of faded violets, but a little, fat, bright blue pitcher, with great, flaming vermilion roses on either side, the most grotesquely and uncompromisingly ugly bit of crockery that one would find from Dan to Beersheba.
Have you never noticed that it is often the most whimsically inconsequent, the most utterly ordinary, the most intrinsically prosaic of inanimate things that, with a sudden and overwhelming rush, will call into being memories the tenderest, the deepest, the saddest? It may be a worthless little book, a withered flower ghastly in its brown grave clothes, a cheap, tawdry trinket; it may be something as intangible as a few bars of a hackneyed song ground out on a wheezy, asthmatic hand organ. But just so surely as one has lived – and therefore loved – one knows the inherent power to sting and wound in things the most pitiably commonplace. De Musset speaks of the “little pebble”:
/* But when upon your fated way you meet Some dumb memorial of a passion dead, That little pebble stops you, and you dread To bruise your tender feet. */
So to Nancy, coming suddenly and at the psychological moment upon that absurd bit of blue clay cajoled from a friendly waiter at a little, out-of-the-way Bohemian restaurant, one never-to-be-forgotten night, the bottom seemed to have dropped out of the universe. The things of this world seemed suddenly to lose their value, and to grow poor and mean and worthless. And she only knew that she was miserable, and heart-hungry, and soul-sick for one who never came, for one who never again would come, forever and forever.
With the little blue pitcher held tightly in her hand, she walked over to the window and looked up at the big gray stone house that was soon to know her as its mistress. And for the very first time the perfect realization of what it all would mean was borne in upon her. She stood there for several minutes motionless, then with a violent, angry shake of the head she cried out in a high, defiant voice: “No, no, no, not until – not yet, not yet!”
She walked rapidly away from the window, and put the little blue pitcher in a post of honor on the mantelpiece. Then, crossing over to the dressing table, she picked up her purse and carefully counted the money. The result must have been satisfactory, for a half-triumphant smile flitted across her face. After that, from the mysterious depths of that same purse, she unearthed a time-table and studied it earnestly.
Then, sitting at her tiny desk, she nervously scrawled these words:
Dear Mother: I have gone to New York to spend the night with Lilla Browning – made up my mind suddenly, and as I knew you were asleep, didn’t want to bother you. Knew you couldn’t possibly have any objection, because you are so fond of Lil. Want to do some shopping in the morning, and thought this would be the best way to get an early start. Expect me home to-morrow afternoon on the 5:45. Best regards to Mr. Thornton. Have Maggie press my red dress; tell her to be careful not to scorch it. I found the lace. By-by. Nancy.
“All’s fair in love and war,” she murmured, softly, rising from her chair, and taking off stock and belt preparatory to a change of costume. She smiled happily as she caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror. Her eyes were starlike, her whole expression was perfectly radiant.
“And you’re responsible for it all, you little imp!” She shook her finger at the fat, bright blue pitcher with flaming vermilion roses on either side, as it stood on the mantelpiece in blissful unconsciousness of its total depravity.
In less than twenty minutes Nancy was dressed for the street and on her way to the railroad station. Ten minutes later two telegrams flashed over the wires. One ran:
Mrs. Jonathan Browning, West Seventy-second Street, New York City: Will spend to-night with you. Arrive about ten. Don’t meet me. Nancy.
The second one was more brief:
Mr. Philip Peirce. Princeton Club, New York City: Dine with me to-night at Scarlatti’s at seven. Anne Warren.
Not until Nancy, after dismissing the hansom, found herself solitary and alone on the sidewalk in front of the gayly lighted little Bohemian restaurant, did she realize the foolishness, the craziness, of her undertaking. In fact, she had no very clear idea of what that undertaking was.
She looked after the retreating hansom, and a wretched, half-frightened homesickness swept over her.
Suppose Phil had not received the telegram! Suppose, receiving it, he had refused to come! She couldn’t blame him, although he had once said that, no matter what —
And then – in speaking of it afterward, Nancy always declared that it was a positive physiological fact that at that moment her heart was located somewhere in the roof of her mouth – some one caught both her hands in his, some one’s glad voice cried “Nance!” and in the twinkling of an eye the homesickness and the memory of the weeks of wretchedness had vanished, and all the misery of the past and all the uncertainty of the future were swallowed up in the joy of the present.
“I’m so sorry to be late.” Phil’s voice was as remorseful as though he had committed all of the seven deadly sins. “I received your telegram just as I was leaving the club to keep an engagement. Took me ten minutes at the ’phone to break the engagement decently. Jove! but I am glad to see you,” he went on, enthusiastically.
“I hoped you would be, but of course I didn’t know.” It was not at all what Nancy had intended to say, but her heart thumped so furiously that she could scarcely think. She was mortally afraid that Phil would hear it pounding away.
“You know I told you that I should always be glad to see you, Nance.” Then, abruptly: “I hope you haven’t caught cold standing here waiting. It’s not warm to-night. Shall we go inside now?” Nancy nodded, and Phil led the way into Scarlatti’s.
She took the whole room in at a glance, and breathed a sigh of contentment so long, so deep, that it must have come from the tips of her toes.