On the following day Bruce and Millicent drove to the Faraway club for
golf. He was unable to detect any signs indicating that Mills’s return
had affected Millicent. She spoke of him as she might have spoken of
any other neighbor. Bruce wasn’t troubled about Mills when he was with
Millicent; it was when he was away from her that he was preyed upon by
apprehensions. He could never marry her: but Mills should never marry
her. This repeated itself in his mind like a child’s rigamarole. Their
game kept them late and it was after six when they left the club in
Bruce’s roadster.
Millicent was beside him; their afternoon together had been unusually
enjoyable. He had every reason to believe that she preferred his
society to that of any other man she knew. He had taken a route into
town that was longer than the one usually followed, and in passing
through a small village an exclamation from Millicent caused him to
stop the car.
“Wasn’t that Leila and Fred at the gas station?” she asked. “Let’s go
back and see.”
Leila saluted them with a wave of the hand. Thomas was speaking to the
keeper of the station.
“Hello, children!” Leila greeted them. “Pause and be sociable. What
have you been up to?”
“Shooting a little golf,” Millicent answered. “Why didn’t you drop the
word that you were going to the club for dinner? You might have had a
little company!”
Bruce strolled over to Thomas, who was still conferring with the
station keeper. He heard the man answer some question as to the best
route to a neighboring town. Thomas seemed a trifle nervous and glanced
impatiently toward Leila and Millicent.
“Hello, Bruce,” he said cheerfully, “how’s everything?”
“Skimming!” said Bruce, and they walked back to the car, where Thomas
greeted Millicent exuberantly. Leila leaned out and whispered to Bruce:
“We’ll be married in an hour. Don’t tell Millie till you get home!”
“Are you kidding?” Bruce demanded.
“Certainly not!”
“But why do it this way?”
“Oh--it’s simpler and a lot more romantic--that’s all! Tell Millie that
everything is all right! Don’t look so scared! All right, Freddy, let’s
go!”
Their car was quickly under way and Millicent and Bruce resumed their
homeward drive.
“Leila didn’t tell me she was going to the club with Freddy,” remarked
Millicent pensively.
“One of those spontaneous things,” Bruce replied carelessly.
When they reached the Hardens’ he walked with her to the door.
“That was odd--meeting Leila and Fred,” said Millicent. “Do you think
they were really going to the club for supper?”
“They were not going there,” Bruce replied. “They’re on their way to be
married.”
“Oh, I’m sorry!” she said and her eyes filled with tears. The privilege
of seeing tears in Millicent’s eyes was to Bruce an experience much
more important than Leila’s marriage.
“It will be a blow to Mr. Mills,” said Bruce thoughtfully. “Let’s hope
he accepts it gracefully.”
Both turned by a common impulse and their eyes rested upon the Mills
house beyond the hedge....
The town buzzed for a few days after Leila’s elopement, but in her
immediate circle it created no surprise. It was like Leila; she could
always be depended upon to do things differently. Mills, receiving the
news from Leila by telephone, had himself conveyed the announcement to
the newspapers, giving the impression that there had been no objection
to the marriage and that the elopement was due to his daughter’s wish
to avoid a formal wedding. This had the effect of killing the marriage
as material for sensational news. It was not Mills’s way to permit
himself to be flashed before his fellow citizens as an outraged and
storming father. Old friends who tried to condole with him found their
sympathy unwelcome. He personally saw to the packing of the effects
Leila telegraphed for to be sent to Pittsburg, where she and her
husband, bound for a motor trip through the east, were to pause for a
visit with Thomas’s parents.