“Big weddings are horrid. I think it’s a great deal nicer to elope—my grandmother eloped, and she was only sixteen at the time, nearly two years younger than I.”

“That is a very foolish way to talk, Tina; times are quite different, now.”

“I don’t see why! Anyway, I hate weddings. I only care for dances. Momsey, aren’t you going to let me go to this dance? What difference does it make if I’m not out? All my friends are to be there—the Clarks, and Edith Bayne and Francis Fanshawe. Daddy said I could go before he went away, and I’ve been counting on it all the time, and now you won’t let me!”

Tina sat on an ottoman in the centre of the big, mahogany-furnished, old-fashioned room, with her light hair falling over one ear and her large, clear, blue eyes fixed tragically on the face of the parent who sat busily sewing. Tina’s slim shoulders were hunched forward and her feet crossed in the attitude which always brought forth her mother’s rebuke:

“Don’t sit that way, dear; it’s very unladylike.[158] How often have I told you, Tina, that if you get in the habit of sitting like that when we’re alone you’ll do it when you don’t realize it.”

Mrs. Malison’s voice had the tone of a well-worn persistency. She was a young-looking woman for her years, and still handsome enough to make the resemblance to her youngest daughter very apparent even to the obstinate little curve of the short upper lip. The answer was almost as automatic:

“I wouldn’t care! Momsey, why won’t you let me go to the dance?”

“Now, Tina, what is the use of teasing mother any more about that?” said the second daughter, coming into the room. Elinor was small and dark, with finely marked eyebrows, regular features, and an expression of great intelligence, wrecked at times by a shattering wave of nervousness. At the moment she carried in her hand a bird’s bathtub, filled with water, destined for the cage over by the window, where a brown and dishevelled canary hung mopingly from a perch. She went on:

“You know perfectly well that mother thinks you’ve been staying up a great deal too late in the evening. You cannot study and go out at the same time. And she told you she didn’t approve of your being so much[159] with Francis Fanshawe—none of us do. He may be a nice enough boy, but he isn’t our kind. We all of us think you’d better let the acquaintance drop.”

“Oh, if you don’t want me to do anything!” Tina’s eyes began to sparkle ominously. “It doesn’t make the slightest difference to me when you talk that way about my friends. I like them, no matter what you and Annette say. You’ve always been down on Francis! And I don’t care whether I keep on with my studies or not.”

“Tina!” Elinor carefully inserted the bathtub in the cage before flinging herself volubly upon the subject. “Tina, you can’t mean that—you want to be educated, I hope! Besides, you’ll enjoy coming out into society a great deal more later, and if you’re seen everywhere now, people will be taking you for much older than you are.”

“I wouldn’t care!” Tina’s defiant tone took on an increasing rapidity. “I don’t see what good it does to be educated, anyway. People like you just as well when you’re silly. I think it’s dreadfully stupid to go to college the way you did and get so critical, and never see any fun in things, and analyze everybody the way you do Robert Harper, so that you never know whether you like him or not. I wish you’d take enough interest in him to[160] get him to shave off that horrid, little, black mustache—it makes him look so sleek! I don’t care for what they teach in books. It doesn’t do me any good to learn about the ancient Egyptians and the battles of the Civil War, and write Enoch Arden over upside down; I hate Enoch Arden, he makes me so cross—— I care for automobiles, and skating and having a good time with my friends, and dancing. And it’s no use telling me I’ll enjoy myself more later. I want to enjoy myself now! Maybe there won’t be any ‘later’; maybe I’ll be dead.”

“I wonder how you make a bird take a bath,” said Elinor in an absorbed tone. She regarded the canary with a baffled eye. “I’ve had the water warm and I’ve had it cold; I’ve put the tub in every position I can think of, and left it there for half a day at a time, and he only hops around and looks at it.” Her voice rose in sudden, nervous excitement. “I don’t know what to do. He hasn’t taken a bath in a week. He must take a bath!”

“You get in and show him how,” jibed Tina, with a delighted childish giggle. She jumped up from the ottoman, swooping her arms down to embrace the mother, who still sat sewing. “All right momsey, I’m to go to the dance; it’s all settled. Let me try[161] Tweetums, Elinor!” she ran over to the cage, brushing her sister to one side. Tina seemed to take the light with her when she moved; it clung around her bright hair, and radiated from her fair skin and her dear eyes, and even lurked, shimmering, in the folds of her sky-blue gown. She stood with upraised head touching the gilded wires of the cage, talking in tender, caressing sound to the little feathered rebel, with a lure of sugar crumbs upon her red lips, until he came to peck at them. What made the transition—what magic was hers? There was a sudden splash, a shower of raindrops over her laughing, triumphant face as she started back, before she ran from the room. Tina had the winning way.

“I thought I heard Tina in here,” said a taller sister, entering by another door. Annette was perhaps not so pretty as the other two, but she had a large, blonde gentleness, very reposefully attractive. She had been engaged for four years to a charming fellow, whose only lack was that of money, consequent on a dependent mother and sisters. The lovers had preserved the spirit of romance by varying the manifestations of it—for the last twelvemonth spending their time with note-book and pencil, raptly ciphering out the future possibilities of a livelihood for[162] two on the narrowest known limit. Although Annette and Joseph had seen each other nearly every evening during this probation her soft eyes suffused and her soft cheeks rosed as virginally on the thousandth time he appeared as on the first.

She held up a garment now as she spoke. “I want to give this new waist to Tina to mend. Just see where she’s torn it! I found it under her desk.”

“Now, Annette, if you’ve been putting her room to rights again——!” Elinor held up her hands in despair.

“I couldn’t stand seeing it the way it was,” said Annette apologetically.

“Yes, of course, that’s the way you spoil her. I’m sure you and I were brought up very differently. Here, give me a needle and thread, she’ll never mend that waist. Mother, now you’ve let Tina think she’s going to the dance, that settles it; you can’t go back on it now: but I think she ought to understand that this is absolutely the last time.”

“She seemed to take it so to heart,” said the mother weakly. She tried to rally herself intelligently. “Of course I don’t mind her accepting invitations occasionally; she’s nearly eighteen; but the girls who are not out have more going on than the girls that[163] are. And that young Fanshawe—he seems a stupid sort of a boy, to me; but he does such reckless things I do not like to have Tina with him.”

“Oh, mother, he’s all right, really, he’s only young.” Annette’s tone was gently protesting. “He’s so much richer than the others that he can do more things—that’s all; she’ll soon get tired of him. All the boys in that set are devoted to Tina. When a girl is as pretty as she is——” The three looked at each other in the pause that followed, but each saw only the image of the beloved youngest.

Tina, indeed, was in that stage of rebellion at life in which she could see no meaning in any law of her elders; her young desire controverted all their worldly experience. What was the use of saying she couldn’t want to do things when she patently did? Refusal hardened her; reason was only that which darkeneth understanding. She resented any appeal to her affection, not because she had little, but because she had so much that she fought being mastered by it, and thrown into those hated fits of weeping and contrition. She stormily wanted what she wanted. Yet if she were left untrammelled she showed unexpected glimpses of a heart passionately loving and tender; an undercurrent as old as[164] the world, as deep as life, profoundly affecting. Tina was the only one of the family who had “temperament,” a fact dimly perceived only in the desire to shield the child from something unknown. At present there was the uneasy feeling that this something might be a youthful attachment for Francis Fanshawe.

To the critical eye, young Fanshawe, an orphan, was simply a stolid and uninteresting young fellow of twenty-one, tall, heavily built, and reddish in hair and complexion. Elinor characterized him as “thuddy,” a word coined by the family to indicate the quality of weight. He had no expression, and was tongue-tied in the presence of his elders, even the sympathetic Annette failing to elicit response from him, though with the youth of his own “set” Francis seemed to be voluble enough in the loud exchange of catch phrases and slangy interjections which made their happy intercourse, and he and Tina could talk by the hour together in a murmuring undertone. He was rather dangerously well off in a community where only the fathers had money, a fact in itself calculated to affect his reputation. But his light-blue eyes could look squarely into yours, and he had a good grip of the hand. He was undoubtedly a nice enough boy if[165] you liked that kind, though Elinor could only wonder that anybody did. She herself only liked people who interested and stimulated.

With Elinor a lover was a creature to be analyzed mercilessly under the suspicion that otherwise he might get some power over one by sheer force of his affection; he was pictured in all sorts of impossible situations to test his attraction, every barrier was erected that ingenuity could devise. The way Elinor “treated” Robert was one of the stock subjects of interest and reprehension in the family, though Robert, intelligent, darkly good-looking and ineffective, was simply pleased if she was pleasant, and patiently snubbed when she wasn’t. Annette and Joseph—that patently good fellow who had had the courage of his convictions four years ago—enjoyed their little confidences of amused laughter over the situation. Still, precedent had made an engagement of marriage something to be very thoughtfully entered into, or necessarily prolonged. When it came to Tina——

Mrs. Malison wrote to her husband, as he did to her, every night during his long absences from home. She reposed so thoroughly in theory on his judgment that neither of them realized that in practice she decided everything. Her resolution to restrict the[166] girl’s gaieties was suddenly hardened by the events of the dance, though it was twenty-four hours before she got a chance to express it, Tina having slept until the late afternoon in defiance of her pledge to study, and visitors taking up the rest of the day. One visitor, indeed, was partly responsible for the mother’s steadily increasing purpose; kind, elderly, little Miss Ward in her neat black jacket, trimmed with a mysterious ginger-coloured fur, being one of those amiable conversationalists who scatter the seeds of discomfort wherever they tread. Mrs. Malison, although she knew from aforetime what she had to expect, couldn’t help the usual thrill of exasperation at the opening sentence:

“How fleshy you are growing! I said the other day as you were passing, ‘I hardly knew Mrs. Malison, she’s getting so stout; it’s easy to see that she doesn’t let things worry her!’ Your husband looked very badly, I think, when he was here last. I want to apologize for not coming before to congratulate Miss Elinor on her engagement to Mr. Harper.”

“My dear Miss Ward, you have been misinformed”—Mrs. Malison felt that she was holding herself well in hand—“Elinor would be very much obliged to you, I’m sure—but there is no engagement.”

[167]

“Well, now, isn’t that singular!” Miss Ward’s small features indicated a deep and wondering interest. “I certainly understood from Mrs. Painter that Ethel said it was announced; I know she mentioned that every one was talking of it. I was there yesterday looking at the things Mrs. Painter brought over from the other side—beautiful, aren’t they? She gave me a lovely little framed photograph from some place in Italy—Sorrento, I think; you can get them here for a quarter, but of course it’s the thought you value. She showed me the most exquisite laces—and hats——! Six of them; perfect dreams. How pretty your hat looks this year; you’ve had such good wear out of it, too, haven’t you? I’m sure I never mind if a thing isn’t in the newest style! Oh, by the way, my sister was one of the chaperons with you last night at the young people’s dance. She said Miss Tina evidently enjoyed herself if one could judge by her actions—quite a case, isn’t she! And so noticeable-looking, too. Of course, when she gets as old as your other daughters she’ll sober down; I’m sure, as I told my sister, you never see them doing anything conspicuous.”

Conspicuous! The word of all others calculated to bring the blood to a mother’s cheek. Mrs. Malison trembled almost visibly[168] with her effort at self-control, as she switched the conversation further afield, though she saw as plainly as on the night before the lighted ballroom and the tall, lissome, white-clad figure of Tina, with gleaming golden hair and scintillating eyes, “holding hands” with Francis Fanshawe in ring-around-a-rosy fashion, now high above her head, now swinging low down, as the two went flying across the floor, not once, but many times, with an exaggerated, heel-and-toe, boy-and-girl sportiveness after every one else was seated and the music had grown as freakishly mad as they. Mrs. Malison had not realized at first that it was Tina. Then, after that whispered rebuke they had disappeared until it was nearly time to go home, emerging finally, on being sent for, from a palm-hidden corner of the enclosed balcony, Tina with very flushed cheeks, hazy eyes and a general air of having been Called Back, too plain to be mistaken—a perfectly open, childlike defiance of inevitable comment that made one moan in ludicrous dismay. There is nothing so patently open to criticism as innocence. Even through the “thuddiness” of Francis there showed the glitter of an eye which told of the spirit within. Mrs. Malison’s annoyance had culminated when she spoke to Tina on the second morning. She[169] was fully nerved for struggle. This thing had to stop.

“Tina, I have been waiting for an opportunity to speak to you about the ball. I was very much displeased with your behaviour; very much displeased! I felt obliged to write to your father about it. I cannot allow you to go to another dance this winter.”

“All right; I don’t want to,” said Tina uninterestedly.

She had thrown herself down on the wicker lounge beside a black poodle stretched out on the Roman-striped coverlet, and putting her arms around the animal surveyed her mother from this position. Mrs. Malison’s eyes feasted on the picture.

“Tina, you are entirely too young to do as you please. You know nothing about the consequences. After this you are to attend to your studies. I don’t wish you to be seen with Francis Fanshawe any more; and I don’t wish you to invite him here.”

“He’s not coming,” said Tina briefly. “Momsey, I want a new grey suit! I know I had this green one last month, but I hate it. All my friends are getting grey suits now.”

“Tina, have you quarrelled with Francis?”

“No.”

Mrs. Malison looked uncomfortably puzzled.

[170]

“Then—— Has he done anything you don’t like, dear?”

“No.”

“There isn’t anything that you’re keeping from me?” In spite of denial, Mrs. Malison felt the tenacity of some purpose that she could not fathom.

“No; oh, no!” Tina raised her voice at the sight of her two sisters in the doorway. “You can come in; momsey’s finished scolding me. I want a new grey suit—all my friends have grey suits!”

“Well, of all things!” Elinor’s tone was exasperated. “Another new suit—when Annette and I have been wearing our old ones all winter! That’s so like you, Tina, never considering where the money is to come from.”

“I don’t care where the money comes from! Annette, don’t you think I can have it?”

“It seems a little foolish, dear—unless you could wear it later in the season,” began Annette pacifically. “By the way, I heard you say that Francis wasn’t coming here. I thought he was going to take you and Edith to the school concert to-night.”

“No; Robert’s going to take us,” said Tina. She detached herself from her sisters’ embrace and ran away, with the black poodle after her.

[171]

“Robert,” repeated Elinor meditatively; she sat down in the chair her mother had just vacated and stared at Annette. “How very odd! Robert has never taken Tina anywhere. She must have written to him. That child does the most unexpected things! I was wondering last night if I would care for Robert if he were quite different. Some men have such a brutal streak in them. On the other hand, you like a man to know his own mind and keep to it.”

“Yes, indeed,” assented Annette absently. She dropped down on the lounge. “Joseph and I were figuring last night that if we had two dollars more a month we might really get married. That would include the twenty-five cents a week for doctor’s bills—I suppose we ought to allow that.” She stopped a moment to switch onto another track. “It seemed to me there was something odd in Tina’s manner this morning, Elinor; I think she has some plan about Francis!”

As that week went on, and the next and the next, it became apparent to all that there was a change in the dear little youngest. She threw herself into her studies with exemplary conscientiousness, she performed her small, appointed tasks with the modicum of fractiousness. She went out nowhere. She was as lively and capricious as she had always[172] been, and although she celebrated her eighteenth birthday, seemed younger than ever; but through it all there was an odd change—an absence of earnestness when she was earnest, an absence of mirth when she was mirthful. In some unexplained way Tina wasn’t with them; something ineffably bright and soul-inspiring had dropped out of the household. The loss of it made a growing little undercurrent of uneasiness, of anxiety. Through all the daily living there is in every home a fateful knowledge of the unexpressed.

It is impossible to hide one’s secrets. The whole family felt sure that Tina was thinking of Francis Fanshawe, though she never even looked out of the window when he spun past it, as sometimes happened, in his big, white motor car, filled with a gay crowd of bugle-blowing boys. Elinor, with the tacit consent of her elders, actually wrote a note inviting him to the house. He came, indeed, but Tina refused to see him, playing checkers up-stairs in the library with Robert, who had a meditative, humorous way of beating her, while Elinor, perforce, did the entertaining. The big youth was not unpleasing, as she owned afterwards, though he said next to nothing, but his blue eyes looked unusually appreciative and he gripped her hand so hard[173] when he left that her fingers were nearly welded into each other.

It was at the end of the month that Tina came into her mother’s room one morning with an unexpected rush, her golden head thrown back, the black poodle barking delightedly at her heels. There was a note in her voice which had not been there in these four weeks past, as she said:

“Momsey, I’ve something to say to you.”

“Well, come over here, dear. I want to hook you up; your dress is all open in the back. I wish you would be more careful. Isn’t it time for you to go to your lessons?”

“I’m not going to study any more, mother.”

“My dear child, what do you mean?”

“I’ve decided that I want to get married,” said Tina—“to Francis.” A wave of colour rose suddenly over her lovely face, and she made an annoyed motion as if to brush it away. “Annette knows I want to marry him. I wanted her to tell you, but she said you wouldn’t like it unless I told you myself. So now I’m telling you. And I hope you won’t mind very much, for Francis and I will never care for any one else.”

“Oh, my dear child!” said Mrs. Malison. Mother and daughter looked at each other with the same expression of dominant will.[174] “This is, of course, nonsense, Tina.” She braced herself as one does against a coming blow so appalling that one cannot stop to fear the weight of it; all one’s energies must be used to fend it off.

“It distresses me to hear you talk like this; you don’t mean it—you don’t know what it means; but it distresses me, Tina!”

“There, I knew you’d say that!” cried Tina in poignant remonstrance. She dropped into her favourite attitude of hunched up shoulders, her lips set in scornful bitterness. “Every one lectures me and scolds me—nobody wants me to do anything I like except Francis. Even Robert lectures me, though he’s such a muff with Elinor! I know none of you like Francis. I know you all despise him, but he’s a thousand times nicer to me than any one else is. He likes me to have everything I want.”

“Oh, Tina!” said poor Mrs. Malison, her heart pierced with twenty daggers. “Of course, I’m not saying—— If you still care for him in a couple of years, then, perhaps, your father and I may consider it. But you can’t know your own mind now, my darling. You have seen nothing of life; marriage is a very serious thing.”

“Then I don’t want to wait until I know about life, if it’s as horrid as you say it is!”[175] said Tina, hotly. “I don’t want to wait until I change my mind. I’ll never change it. I made Francis stay away on purpose all last month to see what it would be like—and I hated it—and so did he.” Tina’s voice had the ring of a passionate conviction, her blue eyes had a sombre depth of melancholy in them. “Why do we have to wait for years and years like Annette and Joseph when it isn’t necessary? Mother, why can’t Francis and I be married? My grandmother was married at sixteen.”

“And would you leave your father and me, Tina, when we’ve taken care of you, and loved you, so much?” Mrs. Malison’s voice shook, she fastened her eyes on her daughter with anguish. Tina’s mouth took on the obstinate curve which the too obvious appeal to her affections always brought there. She didn’t even take the trouble to answer as she tapped irritatingly on the floor with her small foot. The silence conveyed even more forcibly than words that it was a recognized fact that people left their parents when they married without discredit attaching to them—it was part of the plan. Even through her wretchedness Mrs. Malison drearily acquiesced in the received view of the matter! but for Tina—her baby—— Ah, that was a different thing.

[176]

For Tina’s own good this time she must not have her way.

The mother went around all day with a stone on her heart, that made her face white and drawn and breathing difficult, while Annette and Elinor talked excitedly and incessantly with household avocations half done, and sought the dear little wayward sister separately afterwards, Annette with mute caresses, and larges pieces of bread and jam to supplement the lack of a breakfast, and Elinor with intelligent reasoning as she put the child’s collar straight and fastened her belt. Tina had never dressed herself alone in her life. “I thought I cared for Tommy Burns, Tina, when I was seventeen, and as for even looking at him now——! When it comes down to it, dear, what men have you ever seen?”

“I’ve seen—Robert,” said Tina dangerously, under her breath.

Elinor’s arms fell away from her office of tiring woman; she stood staring.

“Robert——?”

Tina’s eyes gleamed with a daring, revealing, lightning flash: “Well, if you’re never nice to a person yourself, Elinor——” She escaped to the doorway for a parting shot.

“Yes, Robert!” she called back elfishly, and fled, passing her mother with no recognition,[177] and actually going out in young Fanshawe’s car with him for all the afternoon, only coming back in time for dinner, which was a state function, with guests, and going to bed immediately afterwards.

It is strange how one untoward event disrupts all the working order of the mind; that which has given joy loses its flavour, that which has been counted on as sure becomes fluctuant. Everything has to arrange itself anew. If Elinor wrote a note to a Robert who had neglected to appear, it was not from the dictates of reason, but from a novel and jealous desire for his presence. If Annette and Joseph sat up unusually late after the guests had departed it was, perhaps, because figuring over a housekeeping text-book wasn’t as satisfying as sometimes, and they had to keep at it a little longer to capture the pleasure of that future living together. Even to the most unselfish, the most vernally patient of lovers waiting may show a grim face, all “bare of bliss” at times, especially when confronted with a boy of twenty-one who has money and to spare for that leap over the matrimonial barriers. It was only after thoroughly studying a mysterious way of Approaching a Butcher, by which, although special cuts and roasts were so much a pound, you got a whole diagrammic ox for a dollar,[178] that that prophetic feeling of happiness mingled once more with the lovers’ goodnight kiss. Heaven only knows what delicate sentiment was embedded in those visionary steaks and chops!

Long after Joseph had gone Mrs. Malison and Annette talked in the mother’s room, with low, painfully murmuring voices, taking counsel together into the small hours. It was three of the clock when the hurrying of soft footsteps and a touch at the chamber door startled them, and then a piteous voice:

“Momsey; oh, momsey!”

The mother was up on the instant, opening the door; by the light in the hall, Tina’s eyes, ice-blue, stared at her over the lace frills of her night-dress. “I came to tell you—if you feel like that—the way you looked to-day—I’ll tell Francis I won’t marry him; it will kill me; but if you are happy it doesn’t make any difference. I can’t stand seeing you look like that! It will kill me, but you’ll be happier, any way.”

“Oh, dear me!” said Mrs. Malison in despair—anxiety lent roughness to her voice. “This is nonsense, Tina. Come up-stairs this minute. The idea! with nothing on your feet—you’ll get your death of cold.” She led the girl to her own bed, tucking the soft form with resolute fingers, and lying[179] down herself afterwards under the coverlet with her cheek against Tina’s chill flesh.

“Oh, Tina, as if mother could ever be glad if you were unhappy! It’s just because I fear that if you have what you want that it will only be for your unhappiness that I look as I do. If your father were only at home!”

Tina gave a movement of impatience, though she lay close cuddled in her mother’s arms. “I think it would have been a great deal better if we had eloped—Francis and I,” she murmured.

“Tina!” The mother gave a horrified gasp.

“Well, I do think so—it would have saved everything, all the feeling so badly, and the talk, and everything. Francis and I wanted to go off in the automobile this afternoon and get married then, and settle it all at once. People never seem to mind a bit after it’s all over—the Boggses made such a fuss about Lucy’s marrying that widower and now nobody says a word about it. She comes to Sunday-night’s tea with his children.”

“But you didn’t elope, my darling,” said Mrs. Malison, searching for the one crumb of comfort.

“Francis thought you might mind.”

“That was very right of Francis.”

“And he was afraid the car would break[180] down; he had to take it to the garage for repairs.”

“Oh, dear!” sighed the poor mother once more.

It was only after Tina seemed to be asleep that she stole down-stairs again to drop into an uneasy slumber herself.

This battle was going to be a long and weary fray.

They were all down unusually early to breakfast but Tina.

“Don’t waken Miss Tina,” Mrs. Malison warned the maid.

“Sure she’s not in the house, ma’am.” Emma’s tone was glibly important. “Bridget said as how Miss Tina slipped out at six o’clock this morning; she came down the stairs a tiptoe in her new grey shuit. ’Twas towards the trolley car she wint.”

It had happened then already—the blow had fallen! The headstrong child had gone. Mrs. Malison whispered the words with lips that could hardly frame the words. Other people’s daughters had deceived them and done this thing—she had felt shamed for them—but hers! The room went around with her, some one was bringing her water. She saw the scared faces of Annette and Elinor bending over her—the moments seemed like dreary years as they passed.

[181]

The square, marble-pillared clock, in its old-fashioned glass case on the mantel, chimed eight musically as Tina came into the room. Her blue hat with its white feathers was pushed sideways on her rumpled hair, and the new grey suit was wrinkled and spotted with clay from an enormous pot of daisies hugged tightly in her arms. She set it down hastily on the white cloth of the breakfast table, and leaned back, panting, against the mahogany sideboard laden with its tall old silver; the light from the parting of the heavy curtains leaped towards her, and held her in its shining embrace.

“I didn’t know that was going to be so heavy. The trolleys were so slow, they wouldn’t connect. I went to get the flowers for you, momsey, because you’re so fond of them.”

Her eyes took swift tally of the group, unheeding of their exclamations. “Please leave the room, Emma——” she went on speaking with a defiant hardness, broken now and then by an odd, piteous little catch in her young voice:

“I suppose you thought I’d eloped. I promise you now that I won’t; I won’t get married until you and daddy say I can. I’ll wait forever if you say so. I can’t bear to hurt any one’s feelings. But I’ll never be[182] happy here at home any more, and I’ll never care for anybody here. I may act as if I cared, but I won’t, really! I’ll only care for Francis—as he cares for me.” The wind from some far source seemed to shake her with its ruthless power. “You think I’m so young—you make me younger than I really am so that I don’t know how to tell you what I mean—to tell you so that you’ll understand. When I’m with Francis he doesn’t need to speak, he doesn’t even need to be near me; but I’m just so happy!” Her voice had changed to the exquisite cadence of love. “It’s my own life! And whether I’m glad or sorry, I want to spend it with him. I want to be with him anyway—I want to be with him if I die for it!”

She put her hand on her heart with a quick, passionate gesture, her ice-blue eyes had in them that look which is as old as the world, as deep as life. She stepped past the weeping sisters to throw herself on her knees by her mother, to hide her bright head upon her mother’s breast, to reach her young arms up to clasp around her mother’s neck as she whispered:

“Oh, mother, mother, you ought to know!”

“It certainly was a beautiful wedding!”[183] Little Miss Ward was calling once more at the Malisons; her voice was earnestly kind. “How lovely Miss Annette and Miss Elinor looked. I never saw girls keep their looks so well! And Miss Elinor engaged, too, at last! Every one was so surprised at Miss Tina’s getting married so soon. Mr. Fanshawe seemed very happy, I shouldn’t wonder if there really was more to him than people think; he shook my hand so—cordially, it’s a little lame yet. And as for the bride”—Miss Ward lowered her voice tenderly—“well, Mrs. Grandison said, when she saw that child’s sweet, young face going up the aisle, there was something so pathetic about it that she just broke down and gave up and cried, when she thought of all that might be before her. Have you ever thought what a lottery life is?”

“Yes,” said Mrs. Malison. She had indeed! For good or for evil the portion of the youngest was Tina’s. She had had, as always, her own way.