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For a whole year Arnold Wayne had listened to the praises of Katherine Verdon, chanted by his cousins the Danforths. They had found fault with him, as all his relations did, for leading an unsettled life, and were always asking when he was going to marry. He had been travelling for three or four years, associating with all sorts and conditions of men and women, interesting himself in strange religions, penetrating into regions which few Englishmen had ever visited, and he had reached the mature age of thirty-three without having been very deeply and seriously in love. Of course he had had love affairs. There was an Italian who had held him in her enchantments for a whole winter, not to mention a git
"I guess if I want to show the place to Leslie, there isn't any particular harm in it. She's been asking me what it looked like in there and how it differed from their house. You know perfectly well, the Danforths wouldn't care a brass farthing!"
What a wanderer he has been! But now, they tell me, he seems inclined to settle down at last." "That is a good thing," said Elsie, raising the carnations to her face. "He'll marry, I suppose," Francis Ryan went on. "The Danforths are trying to make up the match with Mrs. Verdon. Do you know her? A fair woman, with sky-blue eyes.
"Wayne has grown accustomed to living in tents, and that sort of thing, you see. The old place needs a lady's rule. Mrs. Verdon will make a good chatelaine." "Has she been telling you her secrets?" Mrs. Lennard asked. "No; but the Danforths were talking." "The Danforths generally are talking," the old lady replied. "Well, but I think they are right. It's time for Wayne to settle.
As Phyllis flashed the torch about in a general survey, Leslie noticed that the cottage was obviously dismantled for the winter. The furniture stood huddled against the walls; there were no dainty draperies at the shuttered windows, and the rugs were rolled up, tied, and heaped in one corner. "Nothing seems out of the way here," said Phyllis. "It's just as the Danforths usually leave it.
"He is very fond of her, and she is really a nice woman. I wish them well yes, in all sincerity I wish them well." If there were others who did not feel as kindly as Katherine did, there was no manifestation of ill-will. The Danforths had expected Mrs. Verdon to join them in bewailing the foolish match, but she had quietly and cleverly disappointed them.
They'd do the same for us. And as for getting in why, I've always known a private way of getting in when everything's locked up. The Danforths themselves showed me. We'll get in this afternoon. This morning I promised Ted and Father I'd fish with them awhile; but this afternoon I'm free."
An hour or two later, when Jamie, rosy and beautiful, was wrapped in the deep sweet sleep of childhood, Mrs. Verdon and her sister-in-law were sitting together after dinner. "What an eventful day you have had!" said Mrs. Tell, looking up from her knitting in the softly-shaded light. "And what a romantic meeting with Mr. Wayne! Is he all that the Danforths described?" "Of course not," replied Mrs.
So the two old ladies and the younger one came out into the lane, just in time to see the flutter of summer gowns on the meadow-path. The Danforths were ahead of them. Yes; and Mrs. Verdon, slim and cool and graceful in a dainty costume of blue-grey cashmere a dress which wrung unwilling admiration even from the rector's wife. "That straw-coloured woman dresses well," she said to Elsie.
I was staying with your cousins the Danforths. I am Mrs. Verdon." "I'm delighted to meet you at last," he said cordially. "Mary and Lily were always talking about you. Isn't all this extraordinary? There never was anything like it in a three-volume novel!" Then they both laughed with a comfortable air of old acquaintanceship, and Elsie suddenly had a sense of being left out in the cold.