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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Courting Of Lady Jane, by Josephine Daskam
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Courting Of Lady Jane
+
+Author: Josephine Daskam
+
+Release Date: November 6, 2007 [EBook #23368]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE COURTING OF LADY JANE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE COURTING OF LADY JANE
+
+By Josephine Daskam
+
+Copyright, 1903, by Charles Scribner's Sons
+
+
+The colonel entered his sister's room abruptly, sat down on her bed, and
+scattered a drawerful of fluffy things laid out for packing.
+
+"You don't seem to think about my side of the matter," he said gloomily.
+"What am I to do here all alone, for Heaven's sake?"
+
+"That is so like a man," she murmured, one arm in a trunk. "Let me see:
+party-boots, the children's arctics, Dick's sweater--did you think I
+could live here forever, Cal?"
+
+"Then you shouldn't have come at all. Just as I get thoroughly settled
+down to flowers in the drawing-room, and rabbits in a chafing-dish, and
+people for dinner, you skip off. Why don't you bring the children here?
+What did you marry into the navy for, anyway? Nagasaki! I wouldn't live
+in a place called Nagasaki for all that money could buy!"
+
+"You're cross," said Mrs. Dick placidly. "Please get off that
+bath-wrapper. If you don't like to live alone--Six bath-towels, Dick's
+shoe-bag, my old muff (I hope and pray I'll remember that!) Helen's
+reefer--Why don't you marry?"
+
+"Marry? Marry! Are you out of your mind, Dosia? I marry!"
+
+The colonel twisted his grayish mustache into points; a look of horror
+spread over his countenance.
+
+"Men have done it," she replied seriously, "and lived. Look at Dick."
+
+"Look at him? But how? Who ever sees him? I've ceased to believe in him,
+personally. I can't look across the Pacific. Consider my age, Dosia;
+consider my pepper-and-salt hair; consider my bronchitis; consider--"
+
+"Consider your stupidity! As to your hair, I should hate to eat a salad
+dressed with that proportion of pepper. As to your age, remember you're
+only ten years ahead of me, and I expect to remain thirty-eight for some
+time."
+
+"But forty-eight is centenarian to a girl of twenty-two, Dosia."
+
+The colonel was plaiting and un-plaiting the ball-fringe of the
+bed-slip; his eyes followed the motion of his fingers--he did not see
+his sister's triumphant smile as she dived again into the trunk.
+
+"That depends entirely on the girl. Take Louise Morris, for instance;
+she regards you as partly entombed, probably"--the colonel winced
+involuntarily--"but, on the other hand, a girl like Jane Leroy would
+have no such nonsense in her head, and she can't be much more than
+twenty."
+
+"She is twenty-two," cried the unsuspecting colonel eagerly.
+
+"Ah? I should not have said so much. Now such a girl as that, Cal,
+handsome, dignified, college-bred, is just the wife for an older man.
+One can't seem to see her marrying some young snip of her own age. She'd
+be wasted on him. I happen to know that she refused Wilbur Vail entirely
+on that ground. She admitted that he was a charming fellow, but she told
+her mother he was far too young for her. And he was twenty-eight."
+
+"Did she?" The colonel left the fringe. "But--but perhaps there were
+other reasons; perhaps she didn't--"
+
+"Oh, probably she didn't. But still, she said he was too young. That's
+the way with these serious girls. Now I thought Dick was middle-aged
+when I married him, and he was thirty. Jane doesn't take after her
+mother; she was only nineteen when she was born--I mean, of course, when
+Jane was born. Will you hand me that crocheted shawl, please?"
+
+"My dear girl, you're not going to try to get that into that trunk, too?
+Something will break."
+
+"Not at all, my dear Clarence. Thank you. Will you send Norah up to me
+as you go down?"
+
+It had not occurred to the colonel that he was going down, but he
+decided that he must have been, and departed, forgetting Norah utterly
+before he had accomplished half of the staircase.
+
+He wandered out through the broad hall, reaching down a hat absently,
+and across the piazza. Then, half unconscious of direction, he crossed
+the neat suburban road and strolled up the gravel path of the cottage
+opposite. Mrs. Leroy was sitting in the bay-window, attaching indefinite
+yards of white lace to indefinite yards of white ruffles. Jane, in cool
+violet lawn, was reading aloud to her. Both looked up at his light knock
+at the side door.
+
+"But I am afraid I interrupt," he suggested politely, as he dropped
+into a low chair with a manner that betokened the assurance of a warm
+welcome.
+
+"Not the least in the world," Mrs. Leroy smiled whimsically.
+
+"Lady is reading Pater to me for the good of my soul, and I am listening
+politely for the good of her manners," she answered. "But it is a little
+wearing for us both, for she knows I don't understand it, and I know she
+thinks me a little dishonest for pretending to."
+
+"Mother!"
+
+The girl's gray eyes opened wide above her cool, creamy cheeks; the
+deep dimples that made her mother's face so girlish actually added a
+regularity and seriousness to the daughter's soft chin. Her chestnut
+hair was thick and straight, the little half-curls of the same rich tint
+that fell over her mother's forehead brushed wavelessly back on each
+side of a deep widow's peak.
+
+The two older ones laughed.
+
+"Always uncompromising, Lady Jane!" the colonel cried.
+
+"I assure you, colonel, when Lady begins to mark iniquities, few of us
+stand!"
+
+Jane smiled gravely, as on two children. "You know very well that is
+nonsense," she said.
+
+Black Hannah appeared in the door, beaming and curtsying to the colonel.
+
+"You-all ready foh yoh tea, Miss Lady?" she inquired.
+
+A sudden recollection threw Mrs. Leroy into one of her irresistible fits
+of gentle laughter.
+
+"Oh, Lady," she murmured, "do you remember that impossible creature that
+lectured me about Hannah's asking you for orders? Did I tell you about
+it, colonel?"
+
+Jane shook her head reprovingly.
+
+"Now, mother dearest, you always make him out worse--"
+
+"Worse, my darling? Worse is a word that couldn't be applied to that
+man. Worse is comparative. Positive he certainly was, superlative is
+mild, but comparative--never!"
+
+"Tell about it, do," begged the guest.
+
+"Well, he came to see how Lady was growing up--he's a sort of species of
+relative--and he sat in your chair, colonel, and talked the most amazing
+Fourth Reader platitudes in a deep bass voice. And when Hannah asked
+Lady what her orders were for the grocer, he gave me a terrible look and
+rumbled out: 'I am grieved to see, Cousin Alice, that Jennie has burst
+her bounds!'
+
+"It sounded horribly indecorous--I expected to see her in fragments on
+the floor--and I fairly gasped."
+
+"Gasped, mother? You laughed in his face!"
+
+"Did I, dearest? It is possible." Mrs. Leroy admitted. "And when I
+looked vague he explained, 'I mean that you seem to have relinquished
+the reins very early, Cousin Alice!'
+
+"'Relinquished? Relinquished?' said I. 'Why, dear me, Mr. Wadham, I
+never held 'em!'"
+
+"He only meant, mother dear, that--"
+
+"Bless you, my child, I know what he only meant! He explained it to
+me very fully. He meant that when a widow is left with a ten-year-old
+child, she should apply to distant cousins to manage her and her funds."
+
+"Disgusting beast!" the colonel exclaimed with feeling, possessing
+himself of one of Hannah's beaten biscuits, and smiling as Lady Jane's
+white fingers dropped just the right number of lumps in his tea.
+
+How charming she was, how dignified, how tender to her merry little
+mother, this grave, handsome girl! He saw her, in fancy, opposite him at
+his table, moving so stately about his big empty house, filling it with
+pretty, useless woman's things, lighting every corner with that last
+touch of grace that the most faithful housekeeper could never hope to
+add to his lonely life. For Theodosia had taught him that he was lonely.
+He envied Dick this sister of his.
+
+He wondered that marriage had never occurred to him before: simply it
+had not. Ever since that rainy day in April, twenty years ago, when
+they had buried the slender, soft-eyed little creature with his twisted
+silver ring on her cold finger, he had shut that door of life; and
+though it had been many years since the little ring had really bound him
+to a personality long faded from his mind, he had never thought to open
+the door--he had forgotten it was there.
+
+He was not a talkative man, and, like many such, he dearly loved to be
+amused and entertained by others who were in any degree attractive to
+him. The picture of these two dear women adding their wit and charm and
+dainty way of living to his days grew suddenly very vivid to him; he
+realized that it was an unconscious counting on their continued interest
+and hospitality that had made the future so comfortable for so long.
+
+With characteristic directness he began:
+
+"Will your Ladyship allow me a half-hour of business with the
+queen-mother?"
+
+She rose easily and stepped out through the long window to the little
+side porch, then to the lawn. They watched her as she paced slowly away
+from them, a tall violet figure vivid against all the green.
+
+"She is a dear girl, isn't she?" said her mother softly.
+
+A sudden flood of delighted pride surged through the colonel's heart.
+If only he might keep them happy and contented and--and his! He never
+thought of them apart: no rose and bud on one stem were more essentially
+together than they.
+
+"She is too dear for one to be satisfied forever with even our charming
+neighborliness," he answered gravely. "How long have we lived 'across
+the street from each other,' as they say here, Mrs. Leroy?"
+
+She did not raise her eyes from her white ruffles.
+
+"It is just a year this month," she said.
+
+"We are such good friends," he continued in his gentle, reserved voice,
+"that I hesitate to break into such pleasant relations, even with
+the chance of making us all happier, perhaps. But I cannot resist the
+temptation. Could we not make one family, we three?"
+
+A quick, warm color flooded her cheeks and forehead. She caught her
+breath; her startled eyes met his with a lightning-swift flash of
+something that moved him strangely.
+
+"What do you mean, Colonel Driscoll?" she asked, low and quickly.
+
+"I mean, could you give me your daughter--if she--at any time--could
+think it possible?"
+
+She drew a deep breath; the color seemed blown from her transparent skin
+like a flame from a lamp. For a moment her head seemed to droop; then
+she sat straight and moistened her lips, her eyes fixed level ahead.
+
+"Lady?" she whispered, and he was sure that she thought the word was
+spoken in her ordinary tone. "Lady?"
+
+"I know--I realize perfectly that it is a presumption in me--at my
+age--when I think of what she deserves. Oh, we won't speak of it again
+if you feel that it would be wrong!"
+
+"No, no, it is not that," she murmured. "I--I have always known that I
+must lose her; but she--one is so selfish--she is all I have, you know!"
+
+"But you would not lose her!" he cried eagerly. "You would only share
+her with me, dear Mrs. Leroy! Do you think--could she--it is possible?"
+
+"Lady is an unusual girl," she said evenly, but with something gone out
+of her warm, gay voice. "She has never cared for young people. I know
+that she admires you greatly. While I cannot deny that I should prefer
+less difference than lies between your ages, it would be folly in me to
+fail to recognize the desirability of the connection in every other
+way. Whatever her decision--and the matter rests entirely with her--my
+daughter and I are honored by your proposal, Colonel Driscoll."
+
+She might have been reading a carefully prepared address: her eyes never
+wavered from the wall in front--it was as if she saw her words there.
+
+"Then--then will you ask her?"
+
+She stared at him now.
+
+"You mean that you wish me to ask her to marry you?"
+
+"Yes," he said simply. "She will feel freer in that way. You will know
+as I should not, directly, if there is any chance. I can talk about it
+with you more easily--somehow."
+
+She shrugged her shoulders with a strange air of exhaustion; it was the
+yielding of one too tired to argue.
+
+"Very well," she breathed, "go now, and I will ask her. Come this
+evening. You will excuse--"
+
+She made a vague motion. The colonel pitied her tremendously in a blind
+way. Was it all this to lose a daughter? How she loved her!
+
+"Perhaps to-morrow morning," he suggested, but she shook her head
+vehemently.
+
+"No, to-night, to-night!" she cried. "Lady will know directly. Come
+tonight!"
+
+He went out a little depressed. Already a tiny cloud hung between them.
+Suppose their pleasant waters had been troubled for worse than nothing?
+Suddenly his case appeared hopeless to him. What folly--a man of his
+years, and that fresh young creature with all her life before her! He
+wondered that he could have dreamed of it; he wished the evening over
+and the foolish mistake forgiven.
+
+His sister was full of plans and dates, and her talk covered his almost
+absolute silence. After dinner she retired again into packing, and he
+strode through the dusk to the cottage; his had not been a training that
+seeks to delay the inevitable.
+
+The two women sat, as usual at this hour, on the porch. Their white
+gowns shimmered against the dark honeysuckle-vine. He halted at the
+steps and took off the old fatigue-cap he sometimes wore, standing
+straight and tall before them.
+
+Mrs. Leroy leaned back in her chair; the faintest possible gesture
+indicated her daughter, who had risen and stood beside her.
+
+"Colonel Driscoll," she said in a low, uneven voice, "my daughter wishes
+me to say to you that she appreciates deeply the honor you do her, and
+that if you wish it she will be your wife. She--she is sure she will be
+happy."
+
+The colonel felt his heart leap up and hit heavily against his chest.
+Was it possible? A great gratitude and pride glowed softly through him.
+He walked nearly up the steps and stood just below her, lifting her hand
+to his lips.
+
+"My dear, dear child," he said slowly, "you give me too much, but you
+must not measure my thankfulness for the gift by my deserts. Whatever a
+man can do to make you and your mother happy shall be done so long as I
+live."
+
+She smiled gravely into his eyes and bowed her head slightly; like all
+her little motions, it had the effect of a graceful ceremony. Then,
+slipping loose her hand, she seated herself on a low stool beside her
+mother's chair, leaning against her knee. Her sweet silence charmed him.
+
+He took his accustomed seat, and they sat quietly, while the breeze
+puffed little gusts of honeysuckle across their faces. Occasional
+neighbors greeted them, strolling past; the newly watered lawns all
+along the street sent up a fresh turfy odor; now and then a bird chirped
+drowsily. He felt deliriously intimate, peacefully at home. A fine,
+subtle sense of _bien-etre_ penetrated his whole soul.
+
+When he rose to go they had hardly exchanged a dozen words. As he held,
+her hand closely, half doubting his right, she raised her face to him
+simply, and he kissed her white forehead. When he bent over her mother's
+hand it was as cold as stone.
+
+Through the long pleasant weeks of the summer they talked and laughed
+and drove and sailed together, a happy trio. Mrs. Leroy's listless
+quiet of the first few days gave way to a brilliant, fitful gayety that
+enchanted the more silent two, and the few hours when she was not with
+them seemed incomplete. On his mentioning this to her one afternoon she
+shot him a strange glance.
+
+"But this is all wrong," she said abruptly. "What will you do when I am
+gone in the winter?"
+
+"What do you mean?" he asked. "Gone where, when, how?"
+
+"My dear colonel," she said lightly, but with an obvious effort, "do
+you imagine that I cannot leave you a honeymoon, in spite of my doting
+parenthood? I plan to spend the latter part of the winter in New York
+with friends. Perhaps by spring--"
+
+"My dear Mrs. Leroy, how absurd! How cruel of you! What will Lady do?
+What shall I do? She has never been separated from you in her life. Does
+she know of this?"
+
+"No; I shall tell her soon. As for what she will do--she will have her
+husband. If that is not enough for her, she should not marry the man who
+cannot--"
+
+She stopped suddenly and controlled with great effort a rising emotion
+almost too strong for her. Again a deep, inexplicable sympathy welled up
+in him. He longed to comfort her, to give her everything she wanted. He
+blamed himself and Jane for all the trouble they were causing her.
+
+That afternoon she kept in her room, and he and his fiancee drank
+their tea together alone. He was worried by the news of the morning,
+dissatisfied out of all proportion, vexed that so sensible and natural
+a proposition should leave him so uneasy and disappointed. He had
+meant the smooth, quiet life to go on without a break, and now the new
+relation must change everything.
+
+He glanced at Jane, a little irritated that she should not perceive
+his mood and exorcise it. But she had not her mother's marvellous
+susceptibility. She drank her tea in serene silence. He made a few
+haphazard remarks, hoping to lose in conversation the cloud that
+threatened his evening; but she only assented tranquilly and watched the
+changing colors of the early sunset.
+
+"Have you made a vow to agree with everything I say?" he asked finally,
+half laughing, half in earnest.
+
+"Not at all," she replied placidly, "but you surely do not want an
+argument?"
+
+"Oh, no," he answered her, vexed at himself.
+
+"What do you think of Mrs. ------'s novel?" he suggested, as the pages,
+fluttering in the rising breeze, caught his attention.
+
+"Mother is reading it, not I," she returned indifferently. "I don't care
+very much for the new novels."
+
+Involuntarily he turned as if to catch her mother's criticism of the
+book: light, perhaps, but witty, and with a little tang of harmless
+satire that always took his fancy. But she was not there. He sighed
+impatiently; was it possible he was a little bored?
+
+A quick step sounded on the gravel walk, a swish of skirts.
+
+"It is Louise Morris," she said, "I'll meet her at the gate."
+
+After a short conference she returned.
+
+"Will you excuse me, please?" she said, quite eagerly for her. "Mother
+will be down soon, anyway, I am sure. Louise's brother is back; he has
+been away in the West for six years. Mother will be delighted--she was
+always so fond of Jack. Louise is making a little surprise for him. He
+must be quite grown up now. I'll go and tell mother."
+
+A moment later and she was gone. Mrs. Leroy took her place in the
+window, and imperceptibly under her gentle influence the cloud faded
+from his horizon; he forgot the doubt of an hour ago. At her suggestion
+he dined there, and found himself, as always when with his hostess, at
+his best. He felt that there was no hypocrisy in her interest in his
+ideas, and the ease with which he expressed them astonished him even
+while he delighted in it. Why could he not talk so with Jane? It
+occurred to him suddenly that it was because Jane herself talked rarely.
+She was, like him, a listener, for the most part. His mind, unusually
+alert and sensitive to-night, looked ahead to the happy winter evenings
+he had grown to count on so, and when, with an effort, he detached
+this third figure from the group to be so closely allied after
+Christmas-tide--the date fixed for the wedding--he perceived that there
+was a great gap in the picture, that the warmth and sparkle had suddenly
+gone. All the tenderness in the world could not disguise that flash of
+foresight.
+
+He grew quiet, lost in revery. She, following his mood, spoke less and
+less; and when Jane returned, late at night, escorted by a tall, bronzed
+young ranchman, she found them sitting in silence in a half-light,
+staring into the late September fire on the hearth.
+
+In the month that followed an imperceptible change crept over the three.
+The older woman was much alone--variable as an April day, now merry and
+caressing, now sombre and withdrawn. The girl clung to her mother more
+closely, sat for long minutes holding her hand, threw strange glances at
+her betrothed that would have startled him, so different were they
+from her old, steady regard, had not his now troubled sense of some
+impalpable mist that wrapped them all grown stronger every day. He
+avoided sitting alone with her, wondering sometimes at the ease
+with which such tete-a-tetes were dispensed with. Then, struck with
+apprehension at his seeming neglect, he spent his ingenuity in delicate
+attentions toward her, courtly thoughtfulness of her tastes, beautiful
+gifts that provoked from her, in turn, all the little intimacies and
+tender friendliness of their earlier intercourse.
+
+At one of these tiny crises of mutual restoration, she, sitting alone
+with him in the drawing-room, suddenly raised her eyes and looked
+steadily at him.
+
+"You care for me, then, very much?" she said earnestly. "You--you would
+miss--if things were different? You really count on--on--our marriage?
+Are you happy?"
+
+A great remorse rose in him. Poor child--poor, young, unknowing
+creature, that, after all, was only twenty-two! She felt it, then, the
+strange mist that seemed to muffle his words and actions, to hold him
+back. And she had given him so much!
+
+He took her hands and drew her to him.
+
+"My dear, dear child," he said gently, "forgive a selfish middle-aged
+bachelor if he cannot come up to the precious ideals of the sweetest
+girlhood in the world! I am no more worthy of you, Lady dear, than
+I have ever been, but I have never felt more tender toward you, more
+sensible of all you are giving me. I cannot pretend to the wild love of
+the poets you read so much; that time, if it ever was, is past for me.
+I am a plain, unromantic person, who takes and leaves a great deal for
+granted--I thought you knew that. But you must never doubt--" He paused
+a moment, and for the first time she interrupted him nervously.
+
+"I never will--Clarence," she said almost solemnly; and it struck him
+for the first time that she had never called him by his name before. He
+leaned over her, and as in one of her rare concessions she lifted her
+face up to him, he bent lower than her forehead; what compelled him to
+kiss her soft cheek rather than her lips he did not know.
+
+Unexpected business summoned him to New York for a fortnight the next
+day, and the great city drew him irresistibly into its noisy maelstrom.
+The current of his thoughts changed absolutely. Old friends and new took
+up his leisure. His affairs, as they grew more pressing, woke in him
+a keen delight in the struggle with his opponents; as he shook hands
+triumphantly with his lawyer after a well-earned victory he felt years
+younger. He decided that he had moped too long in the country: "We must
+move into town this season," he said to himself.
+
+He fairly ran up the cottage steps in the gathering dusk. He longed to
+see them, full of plans for the winter. Hannah met him at the door:
+the ladies had gone to a dance at the Morrises'; there had been an
+invitation for him, so he would not intrude if he followed.
+
+Hastily changing his clothes, he walked up the street. Lights and music
+poured out of the open windows of the large house; the full moon made
+the grounds about it almost as bright as the rooms. He stepped up on
+the piazza and looked in at the swaying couples. Lady Jane, beautiful
+in pale blue mull, drifted by in her young host's arms. She was flushed
+with dancing; her hair had escaped from its usual calm. He hardly
+recognized her. As he looked out toward the old garden, he caught a
+glimpse of a flowing white gown, a lace scarf thrown over a head whose
+fine poise he could not mistake.
+
+A young man passed him with a filmy crepe shawl he knew well. The
+colonel stepped along with him.
+
+"You are taking this to Mrs. Leroy?"
+
+"Yes, colonel, she feels the air a little."
+
+"Let me relieve you of it," and he walked alone into the garden with the
+softly scented cobweb over his arm.
+
+She was standing in an old neglected summer-house, her back to the door.
+As he stopped behind her and laid the soft wrap over her firm white
+shoulders, she turned her head with a startled prescience of his
+personality, and met his eyes full. He looked straight into those soft
+gray depths, and as he looked, searching for something there, he knew
+not what, troubled strangely by her nearness and the helpless surrender
+of her fastened gaze, a great light burst upon him.
+
+"It is you! it is you!" he said hoarsely, and crushing her in his arms,
+he kissed her heavily on her yielding mouth.
+
+For a moment she rested against him. The music, piercingly sweet, drove
+away thought. Then she drew herself back, pushing him blindly from her.
+
+"No, no, no!" she gasped, "it is Lady! You are mad--"
+
+"Mad?" he said quickly. "I was never sane till now. When I think of what
+I had to offer that dear child, when I realize to what a farce of love
+I was sacrificing her--oh, Alice dearest, you are a woman; you must have
+known!"
+
+She raised her head; an unquenchable triumph smiled at him.
+
+"I did know!" she cried exultantly. Suddenly her whole expression
+changed, her head sank again.
+
+"Oh, Lady, my child, my baby!" she moaned, all mother now, and
+brokenhearted.
+
+"You must never tell her, never!" she panted. "You will forget; you--I
+will go away--"
+
+"It is you who are mad, Alice," he said sternly. "Listen to me. For all
+these weeks it has been your voice I have remembered, your face I
+have seen in imagination in my house. It is you I have missed from
+us three--never Lady. It is you I have tried to please and hoped to
+satisfy--not Lady. Ever since you told me you would not spend the winter
+with us I have been discontented. Why, Alice, I have never kissed her in
+my life--as I have kissed you."
+
+She grew red to the tips of her little ears, and threw him a quick
+glance that tingled to his fingers' ends.
+
+"You would not have me--oh, my dear, it is not possible!" he cried.
+
+She burst into tears. "I don't know--I don't know!" she sobbed. "It will
+break her heart! I don't understand her any more; once I could tell what
+she would think, but not now."
+
+"Hush! some one is coming," he warned her, and taking her arm he drew
+her out through a great gap in the side of the little house, so that
+they stood hidden by it.
+
+"Then I will tell him to his face what I think of him!" said a young
+man's voice, angry, determined, but shaking with disappointment. "To
+hold a girl--"
+
+"He does not hold me--I hold myself!" It was Lady's voice, low and
+trembling. "It is all my fault, Jack. I bound myself before I knew
+what--what a different thing it really was. I do love him--I love him
+dearly, but not--not--No, no; I don't mean what you think--or, if I do,
+I must not. Jack, I have promised, don't you see? And when I thought
+that perhaps he didn't care so much, and asked him--oh, I told you how
+beautifully he answered me, I will never hurt him so, never!"
+
+"It is disgusting, it is horrible; he is twenty-five years older than
+you--he might be your father!" stormed the voice.
+
+"I--I never cared for young people before!"
+
+Could this be Lady, this shy, faltering girl? Moved by an overmastering
+impulse, the man behind the summer-house turned his head and looked
+through the broken wall.
+
+Lady Jane was blushing and paling in quick succession: the waves of red
+flooded over her moved face and receded like the tide at turn. Her eyes
+were piteous; her hair fell low over her forehead; she looked incredibly
+young.
+
+"Of course," said the young man bitterly, "it is a good match--a fine
+match, You will have a beautiful home and everything you want."
+
+She put out her hands appealingly. "Oh, Jack, how can you hurt me so?
+You know I would live with you in a garret--on the plains--"
+
+"Then do it."
+
+"I shall never hurt a person so terribly to whom I have freely given my
+word," she said, with a touch of her old-time decision.
+
+Colonel Driscoll felt his blood sweeping through his veins like wine. He
+was far too excited for finesse, too eager--and he had been so willing
+to wait, once!--for the next sweet moment when this almost tragedy
+should be resolved into its elements. He strode out into the open space
+in front of the little house.
+
+"My dear young people," he said, as they stared at him in absolute
+silence, "I am, I am--" He had intended to carry the matter off
+jocularly, but the sight of the girl's tear-stained face and the emotion
+of the minutes before had softened and awed him. His eyes seemed yet to
+hold those gray ones; he felt strangely the pressure of that soft body
+against his.
+
+"Ah, my dear," he said gently, "could you not believe me when I told you
+that my one wish was to make you happy as long as I lived? Happiness is
+not built on mistakes, and you must forgive us if we do not always allow
+youth to monopolize them.
+
+"She has always been like a dear child to me, Mr. Morris"--he turned to
+the other man--"and you would never wish me to change my regard for her,
+could you know it!
+
+"Go with him, Lady dear, and forgive me if I have ever pained
+you--believe me, I am very happy to-night."
+
+He raised her softly as she knelt before him weeping, and kissed her
+hair.
+
+"But there is nothing to forgive," he assured her.
+
+They went away hand in hand, happy, like two dazed children for whom
+the sky has suddenly but not--because they are young--too miraculously
+opened, and the shrubbery swallowed them.
+
+He turned and strode back into the shadow. Mrs. Leroy sat crouching on
+the fallen timber, her head still bent. Stooping behind her, he drew her
+toward him.
+
+"They have forgotten us by now," he whispered, "can I make you forget
+them?"
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The Courting Of Lady Jane, by Josephine Daskam
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