"Yes? And how is that?"
"Lovely. Just lovely."
As she bent forward to put down her glass she patted his cheek. "Oh,
you'll do very well for Constance!" Then, seriously, "I'm glad if I do,
though. I want you to like me well enough to come to see us often this
winter. You shall come with your uncle to make a fourth at whist. Mr.
Forrester must have his whist in the evening. Do you think he is looking
any worse, Niel? It frightens me to see him getting a little uncertain.
But there, we must believe in good luck!" She took up the half-empty
glass and held it against the light.
Niel liked to see the firelight sparkle on her earrings, long pendants
of garnets and seed-pearls in the shape of fleurs-de-lys. She was the
only woman he knew who wore earrings; they hung naturally against her
thin, triangular cheeks. Captain Forrester, although he had given her
handsomer ones, liked to see her wear these, because they had been his
mother's. It gratified him to have his wife wear jewels; it meant
something to him. She never left off her beautiful rings unless she was
in the kitchen.
"A winter in the country may do him good," said Mrs. Forrester, after a
silence during which she looked intently into the fire, as if she were
trying to read the outcome of their difficulties there. "He loves this
place so much. But you and Judge Pommeroy must keep an eye on him; when
he is in town, Niel. If he looks tired or uncertain, make some excuse
and bring him home. He can't carry a drink or two as he used,"--she
glanced over her shoulder to see that the door into the dining-room was
shut. "Once last winter he had been drinking with some old friends at
the Antlers,--nothing unusual, just as he always did, as a man must be
able to do,--but it was too much for him. When he came out to join me in
the carriage, coming down that long walk, you know, he fell. There was
no ice, he didn't slip. It was simply because he was unsteady. He had
trouble getting up. I still shiver to think of it. To me, it was as if
one of the mountains had fallen down."
A little later Niel went plunging down the hill, looking exultantly into
the streak of red sunset. Oh, the winter would not be so bad, this year!
How strange that she should be here at all, a woman like her among
common people! Not even in Denver had he ever seen another woman so
elegant. He had sat in the dining-room of the Brown Palace hotel and
watched them as they came down to dinner,--fashionable women from "the
East," on their way to California. But he had never found one so
attractive and distinguished as Mrs. Forrester. Compared with her, other
women were heavy and dull; even the pretty ones seemed lifeless,--they
had not that something in their glance that made one's blood tingle. And
never elsewhere had he heard anything like her inviting, musical laugh,
that was like the distant measures of dance music, heard through opening
and shutting doors.
He could remember the very first time he ever saw Mrs. Forrester, when
he was a little boy. He had been loitering in front of the Episcopal
church one Sunday morning, when a low carriage drove up to the door. Ben
Keezer was on the front seat, and on the back seat was a lady, alone, in
a black silk dress all puffs and ruffles, and a black hat, carrying a
parasol with a carved ivory handle. As the carriage stopped she lifted
her dress to alight; out of a swirl of foamy white petticoats she thrust
a black, shiny slipper. She stepped lightly to the ground and with a nod
to the driver went into the church. The little boy followed her through
the open door, saw her enter a pew and kneel. He was proud now that at
the first moment he had recognized her as belonging to a different world
from any he had ever known.
Niel paused for a moment at the end of the lane to look up at the last
skeleton poplar in the long row; just above its pointed tip hung the
hollow, silver winter moon.