that she could bear it no longer. But, gradually, a numbness
succeeded the pain. She found herself listening apathetically.
McEachern talked on. He left the subject of Jimmy, comfortably
conscious that, even if there had ever existed in Molly’s heart any
budding feeling of the kind he had suspected, it must now be dead.
He steered the conversation away until it ran easily among
commonplaces. He talked of New York, of the preparations for the
theatricals. Molly answered composedly. She was still pale, and a
certain listlessness in her manner might have been noticed by a more
observant man than Mr. McEachern. Beyond this, there was nothing to
show that her heart had been born and killed but a few minutes
before. Women have the Red Indian instinct; and Molly had grown to
womanhood in those few minutes.
Presently, Lord Dreever’s name came up. It caused a momentary pause,
and McEachern took advantage of it. It was the cue for which he had
been waiting. He hesitated for a moment, for the conversation was
about to enter upon a difficult phase, and he was not quite sure of
himself. Then, he took the plunge.
“I have just been talking to Sir Thomas, my dear,” he said. He tried
to speak casually, and, as a natural result, infused so much meaning
into his voice that Molly looked at him in surprise. McEachern
coughed confusedly. Diplomacy, he concluded, was not his forte. He
abandoned it in favor of directness. “He was telling me that you had
refused Lord Dreever this evening.”
“Yes. I did,” said Molly. “How did Sir Thomas know?”
“Lord Dreever told him.”
Molly raised her eyebrows.
“I shouldn’t have thought it was the sort of thing he would talk
about,” she said.
“Sir Thomas is his uncle.”
“Of course, so he is,” said Molly, dryly. “I forgot. That would
account for it, wouldn’t it?”
Mr. McEachern looked at her with some concern. There was a hard ring
in her voice which he did not altogether like. His greatest admirer
had never called him an intuitive man, and he was quite at a loss to
see what was wrong. As a schemer, he was perhaps a little naive. He
had taken it for granted that Molly was ignorant of the maneuvers
which had been going on, and which had culminated that afternoon in
a stammering proposal of marriage from Lord Dreever in the rose-
garden. This, however, was not the case. The woman incapable of
seeing through the machinations of two men of the mental caliber of
Sir Thomas Blunt and Mr. McEachern has yet to be born. For some
considerable time, Molly had been alive to the well-meant plottings
of that worthy pair, and had derived little pleasure from the fact.
It may be that woman loves to be pursued; but she does not love to
be pursued by a crowd.
Mr. McEachern cleared his throat, and began again.
“You shouldn’t decide a question like that too hastily, my dear.”
“I didn’t–not too hastily for Lord Dreever, at any rate, poor
dear.”
“It was in your power,” said Mr. McEachern portentously, “to make a
man happy–”
“I did,” said Molly, bitterly. “You should have seen his face light
up. He could hardly believe it was true for a moment, and then it
came home to him, and I thought he would have fallen on my neck. He
did his very best to look heart-broken–out of politeness–but it
was no good. He whistled most of the way back to the house–all
flat, but very cheerfully.”
“My dear! What do you mean?”
Molly had made the discovery earlier in their conversation that her
father had moods whose existence she had not expected. It was his
turn now to make a similar discovery regarding herself.
“I mean nothing, father,” she said. “I’m just telling you what
happened. He came to me looking like a dog that’s going to be
washed–”
“Why, of course, he was nervous, my dear.”
“Of course. He couldn’t know that I was going to refuse him.”
She was breathing quickly. He started to speak, but she went on,
looking straight before her. Her face was very white in the moon-