Her eyes glistened when
she said it, and Marcella felt like pinning a white ribbon to her then
and there.
Escorting Miss Caroline to her home that night, I listened to her
account of this colloquy and found myself wishing that matters had been
different. It seemed to me that I must ultimately become the victim of a
romantic passion for her, and I told her as much when we parted.
Gossip, the yellow-tongued dragon, had been tracked to its lair and done
to death, or at least that one of its heads had been smitten off which
babbled slander of Miss Caroline.
Thenceforth she and I were free to think upon other matters. And there
were these other matters in both our lives.
As to most of them we did not hold speech together. Our intimacy as yet
lay quite within a circle so charmed that it might not be entered by
things too personal to either of us. By a kind of tacit treaty we
brought thither none but those affairs which invited a not too serious
tone. Our late common life had provided an abundance of these, and they
had been hailed by my friend with an unfailing levity which the widow of
J. Rodney Potts, for one, would have found it impossible to condone. "I
am a light old woman," she had said to me; "I laugh at the world even
when I fear it most.
Pages:
233
234
235
236
237
238
239
240
241
242
243
244
245
246
247
248
249
250
251
252
253
254
255
256
257