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He had not expected her to take him at a disadvantage, as she had done with her previous thrust, and now he did not think that she had slipped away to hide her feelings. That did not seem necessary in Jessy's case, though he believed she was more or less disturbed. She came back presently, looking calm, and sat down again. "My brother will be here in a quarter of an hour," she informed him.
Mamie whimpered a little as she replied. Mamie had a habitual whimper and a mean little face, with a wisp of flaxen hair tied with a dirty blue ribbon. "Yes, ma'am," she replied. "Jessy she growed so she couldn't git into 'em, and mummer " The boy, who was very thin, almost to emaciation, and looked consumptive, but who was impishly pert, cut in. "I had to wear Jessy's shirts," he said.
She held Jessy, who wore a threadbare little cape over her frock, by the hand. Franky Ramsey and Mamie Ramsey, Jessy's younger brother and sister, tagged timidly behind her. Finally, Maria waited for them to come up with her, which they did with a cringing air. "I want to know," said Maria to Mamie, "if you are wearing all your sister's underclothes this winter?"
In the meanwhile Carroll had taken his place by Jessy's side. "I understand that you steered your comrade satisfactorily through the meeting to-day," she began. "No," objected Carrol; "I can't claim any credit for doing so. In matters of that kind Vane takes full control; and I'm willing to own that he drove us all, including your brother, on the course he chose." Jessy laughed good-humoredly.
She could not distrust this girl; it was Jessy's suggestion that was incredible. "It would interest me very much," she declared. Kitty told her story effectively, but with caution, laying most stress upon Vane's compassion for the child and her invalid mother. She was rather impressed by Miss Chisholm, but she supposed that she was endowed with some of the failing common to human nature.
Nairn followed Jessy's retreating figure with distrustful eyes. "Weel," he drawled, "I'm thinking yon besom may have had a hand in the thing." A few minutes later Jessy, standing where the light of a big lamp streamed down upon her through the boughs of a leafless maple, bade Vane farewell at her brother's gate.
So the thing happened which always has and always will happen in such cases; when the magic and the enchantment of Jessy's great personal beauty had lost their first novelty and power, she gradually became to her husband "Something better than his dog, a little dearer than his horse." I did not much blame Will Lennox. It is very hard to love what we do not comprehend.
She knew that she loved the man; indeed, she had really known it for some time, and it was that which had made Jessy's revelation so bitter. Now, fastidious in thought and feeling as she was, she wondered whether she had been too hard upon him; it was becoming more and more difficult to believe that he could have justified her disgust and anger; but this was not what troubled her most.
"Yes," she replied; "I think that would please you. But how long have you been back?" "A fortnight, yesterday." There was a hint of reproach in Jessy's glance. "Then I think Mrs. Nairn might have brought you over to see us." Vane wondered whether she meant that she was surprised that he had not come of his own accord. He felt mildly flattered.
She made Horsfield put some pressure on the people who had previously hired the boat." "That's rather strange." For a moment he looked puzzled, but almost immediately his face grew impassive, and Carroll knew that he had some idea of Jessy's treachery. He was, however, sure that any suspicions his comrade entertained would remain locked up in his breast. "I'm grateful to her, anyway," Vane added.
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