was so unexpected. I was sitting alone in my room this afternoon—I believe I was moping—when Bessie brought up his card. I gave it one rapturous look and tore downstairs, passing Alicia in the hall like a whirlwind, and burst into the drawing-room in a most undignified way.
"Jack!" I cried, holding out both hands to him in welcome.
There he was, just the same old Jack, with his splendid big shoulders and his lovely brown eyes. And his necktie was crooked, too; as soon as I could get my hands free I put them up and straightened it out for him. How nice and old-timey that was!
"So you are glad to see me, Kitty?" he said as he squeezed my hands in his big strong paws.
"'Deed and 'deed I am, Jack. I thought you had forgotten me altogether. And I've been so homesick and so—so everything," I said incoherently. "And, oh, Jack, I've so many questions to ask I don't know where to begin. Tell me all the Thrush Hill and Valleyfield news, tell me everything that has happened since I left. How many people have you killed off? And, oh, why didn't you come to see me before?"
"I didn't think I should be wanted, Kitty," Jack answered quietly. "You seemed to be so absorbed in your new life that old friends and interests were crowded out."
"So I was at first," I answered penitently. "I was dazzled, you know. The glare was too much for my Thrush Hill brown. But it's different now. How did you happen to come, Jack?"
"I had to come to Montreal on business, and I thought it would be too bad if I went back without coming to see what they had been doing in Vanity Fair to my little playmate."
"Well, what do you think they have been doing?" I asked saucily.
I had on a particularly fetching gown and knew I was looking my best. Jack, however, looked me over with his head on one side.
"Well, I don't know, Kitty," he said slowly. "That is a stunning sort of dress you have on—not so pretty, though, as that old blue muslin you used to wear last summer—and your hair is pretty good. But you look rather disdainful and, after all, I believe I prefer Thrush Hill Kitty."
How like Jack that was. He never thought me really pretty, and he is too honest to pretend he does.
But I didn't care. I just laughed, and we sat down together and had a long, delightful, chummy talk.
Jack told me all the Valleyfield gossip, not forgetting to mention that Mary Carter was going to be married to a minister in June. Jack didn't seem to mind it a bit, so I guess he couldn't have been particularly interested in Mary.
In due time Alicia sailed in. I suppose she had found out from Bessie who my caller was, and felt rather worried over the length of our tête-à-tête.
She greeted Jack very graciously, but with a certain polite condescension of which she is past mistress. I am sure Jack felt it, for, as soon as he decently could, he got up to go. Alicia asked him to remain to dinner.
"We are having a few friends to dine with us, but it is quite an informal affair," she said sweetly.
I felt that Jack glanced at me for the fraction of a second. But I remembered that Gus Sinclair was coming too, and I did not look at him.
Then he declined quietly. He had a business engagement, he said.
I suppose Alicia had noticed that look at me, for she showed her claws.
"Don't forget to call any time you are in Montreal," she said more sweetly than ever. "I am sure Katherine will always be glad to see any of her old friends, although some of her new ones are proving very absorbing—one, in especial. Don't blush, Katherine, I am sure Mr. Willoughby won't tell any tales out of school to your old Valleyfield friends."
I was not blushing, and I was furious. It was really too bad of Alicia, although I don't see why I need have cared.
Alicia kept her eye on us both until Jack was fairly gone. Then she remarked in the patronizing tone which I detest:
"Really, Katherine, Jack Willoughby has developed into quite a passable-looking fellow, although he is rather shabby. But I suppose he is poor."
"Yes," I answered curtly, "he is poor, in everything except youth and manhood and goodness and truth! But I suppose those don't count for anything."
Whereupon Alicia lifted her eyebrows and looked me over.
Just at dusk a box arrived with Jack's compliments. It was full of lovely white carnations, and must have cost the extravagant fellow more than he has any business to waste on flowers. I was beast enough to put them on when I went down to listen to another man's love-making.
This evening I sparkled and scintillated with unusual brilliancy, for Jack's visit and my consequent crossing of swords with Alicia had produced a certain elation of spirits. When Gus Sinclair was leaving he asked if he might see me alone tomorrow afternoon.
I knew what that meant, and a cold shiver went up and down my backbone. But I looked down at him—spick-and-span and glossy—his neckties are never crooked—and said, yes, he might come at three o'clock.
Alicia had noticed our aside—when did anything ever escape her?—and when he was gone she asked, significantly, what secret he had been telling me.
"He wants to see me alone tomorrow afternoon. I suppose you know what that means, Alicia?"
"Ah," purred Alicia, "I congratulate you, my dear."
"Aren't your congratulations a little premature?" I asked coldly. "I haven't accepted him yet."
"But you will?"
"Oh, certainly. Isn't it what we've schemed and angled for? I'm very well satisfied."
And so I am. But I wish it hadn't come so soon after Jack's visit, because I feel rather upset yet. Of course I like Gus Sinclair very much, and I am sure I shall be very fond of him.
Well, I must go to bed now and get my beauty sleep. I don't want to be haggard and hollow-eyed at that important interview tomorrow—an interview that will decide my destiny.
Thrush Hill, May 6, 18—.
Well, it did decide it, but not exactly in the way I anticipated. I can look back on the whole affair quite calmly now, but I wouldn't live it over again for all the wealth of Ind.
That day when Gus Sinclair came I was all ready for him. I had put on my very prettiest new gown to do honour to the occasion, and Alicia smilingly assured me I was looking very well.
"And so cool and composed. Will you be able to keep that up? Don't you really feel a little nervous, Katherine?"
"Not in the least," I said. "I suppose I ought to be, according to traditions, but I never felt less flustered in my life."
When Bessie brought up Gus Sinclair's card Alicia dropped a pecky little kiss on my cheek, and pushed me toward the door. I went down calmly, although I'll admit that my heart was beating wildly. Gus Sinclair was plainly nervous, but I was composed enough for both. You would really have thought that I was in the habit of being proposed to by a millionaire every day.
"I suppose you know what I have come to say," he said, standing before me, as I leaned gracefully back in a big chair, having taken care that the folds of my dress fell just as they should.
And then he proceeded to say it in a rather jumbled-up fashion, but very sincerely.
I remember thinking at the time that he must have composed the speech in his head the night before, and rehearsed it several times, but was forgetting it in spots.
When he ended with the self-same question that Jack had asked me three months before at Thrush Hill he stopped and took my hands.
I looked up at him. His good, homely face was close to mine, and in his eyes was an unmistakable look of love and tenderness.
I opened my mouth to say yes.
And then there