Her face flushed as she recalled the momentary pressure of his hand upon hers on that last night on deck. She rang for the servant, and went up to her room.
IX
It is not the purpose of this narrative to dwell minutely upon the events of the next few months. Truth to say, they were devoid of incidents of sufficient moment in themselves to warrant chronicle. What they led up to was memorable enough.
As time went on John found himself on terms of growing intimacy with the Carling household, and eventually it came about that if there passed a day when their door did not open to him it was dies non.
Mr. Carling was ostensibly more responsible than the ladies for the frequency of our friend’s visits, and grew to look forward to them. In fact, he seemed to regard them as paid primarily to himself, and ignored an occasional suggestion on his wife’s part that it might not be wholly the pleasure of a chat and a game at cards with him that brought the young man so often to the house. And when once she ventured to concern him with some stirrings of her mind on the subject, he rather testily (for him) pooh-poohed her misgivings, remarking that Mary was her own mistress, and, so far as he had ever seen, remarkably well qualified to regulate her own affairs. Had she ever seen anything to lead her to suppose that there was any particular sentiment existing between Lenox and her sister?
“No,” said Mrs. Carling, “perhaps not exactly, but you know how those things go, and he always stays after we come up when she is at home.” To which her husband vouchsafed no reply, but began a protracted wavering as to the advisability of leaving the steam on or turning it off for the night, which was a cold one—a dilemma which, involving his personal welfare or comfort at the moment, permitted no consideration of other matters to share his mind.
Mrs. Carling had not spoken to her sister upon the subject. She thought that that young woman, if she were not, as Mr. Carling said, “remarkably well qualified to regulate her own affairs,” at least held the opinion that she was, very strongly.
The two were devotedly fond of each other, but Mrs. Carling was the elder by twenty years, and in her love was an element of maternal solicitude to which her sister, while giving love for love in fullest measure, did not fully respond. The elder would have liked to share every thought, but she was neither so strong nor so clever as the girl to whom she had been almost as a mother, and who, though perfectly truthful and frank when she was minded to express herself, gave, as a rule, little satisfaction to attempts to explore her mind, and on some subjects was capable of meeting such attempts with impatience, not to say resentment—a fact of which her sister was quite aware. But as time went on, and the frequency of John’s visits and attentions grew into a settled habit, Mrs. Carling’s uneasiness, with which perhaps was mingled a bit of curiosity, got the better of her reserve, and she determined to get what satisfaction could be obtained for it.
They were sitting in Mrs. Carling’s room, which was over the drawing-room in the front of the house. A fire of cannel blazed in the grate.
A furious storm was whirling outside. Mrs. Carling was occupied with some sort of needlework, and her sister, with a writing pad on her lap, was composing a letter to a friend with whom she carried on a desultory and rather one-sided correspondence. Presently she yawned slightly, and, putting down her pad, went over to the window and looked out.
“What a day!” she exclaimed. “It seems to get worse and worse. Positively you can’t see across the street. It’s like a western blizzard.”
“It is, really,” said Mrs. Carling; and then, moved by the current of thought which had been passing in her mind of late, “I fancy we shall spend the evening by ourselves tonight.”
“That would not be so unusual as to be extraordinary, would it?” said Mary.
“Wouldn’t it?” suggested Mrs. Carling in a tone that was meant to be slightly quizzical.
“We are by ourselves most evenings, are we not?” responded her sister, without turning around. “Why do you particularize tonight?”
“I was thinking,” answered Mrs. Carling, bending a little closer over her work, “that even Mr. Lenox would hardly venture out in such a
