As, in the seclusion of Lee's bedroom that night, she and the widow sat
side by side, talking at each other in the wide mirror while making
their night toilets, a "movie-man" would have given his head to
reproduce the scene with its witcheries in the way of unbound hair,
filmy white, glimpses of polished shoulders. But in his absence these
may be left where they belong--behind the secure guard of Lee's oaken
door. Sufficient for the present is their conversation.
"So we've engaged ourself, have we?" As with Gordon, Mrs. Mills went
straight to the bat.
"Why--" Pausing with comb and one yellow curl held in midair, Lee looked
her utter surprise at the smiling face in the glass. "Mary Mills!
_whoever_ told you?"
"This and these would be enough." The widow touched the girl's pale
cheeks and shadowed eyes. "But I caught your young man, coming in, and
made him confess. So we got mad--because he kissed another girl, and
took it out of him by engaging ourself on the spot? Oh, you little
fool!"
Dropping the curl, Lee straightened and stiffened till she looked in the
filmy nightrobe like a cold and classic marble. "If it had been Phyllis
or Phoebe Lovell, or any other nice girl, I wouldn't have cared. But--a
peona."
"Well, what of it?" Assured, now, of the truth of her surmises, the
widow went confidently forward. "She's mighty pretty."
"But a _peona_! And you know _her_."
"Yes, and I know _him_--better than you do. Now look here, my dear--"
Followed a little lecture on the creature, Man, that showed she had
profited by her married experience. "A man is a _man_ and there's no
sense in trying to have him anything else. When a girl loves, she
excludes, for the time at least, all others from her life. But a
man--while he may love one girl with all his strength, he can still see
beauty in others. Nature made him that way and we have simply got to
stand for it. Now if Gordon had been ten years older, I'd have allowed
you real reason. After thirty a man's kisses mean something. But at
Gordon's age they are thistledown and light as air, belong to vanity
rather than love. A young fellow is so proud of having kissed a pretty
girl that he swells up like a turkey gobbler and struts in his
self-esteem without thought for anything else. Then, you, yourself, are
mostly to blame. Why--"
Next a little lecture on the sin of flirting, with appropriate personal
applications which were, however, interrupted by the person. "_You_
didn't flirt with _him_, of course."
"Goodness, child! don't bite me! I couldn't see the poor boy crushed
into the face of the earth. Now listen." After detailing Gordon's
confession, of the injured pride, anger, pique that he had tried to
solace in Felicia's smiles, she concluded, "But you--after driving him
to desperation go and make the vital mistake of your life."
"And you think that was the way of it? That he didn't really _mean_
anything?"
"Didn't he tell me so himself?"
"Well--" she pondered, looking at the widow in the glass, then suddenly
collapsed on the other's warm shoulder. "Oh, I'm so glad! I--I _hate_
him!"
The widow, being a woman, quite understood these contradictions. "Of
course you do." She gently fondled the fair head. "How much?"
The head rose in order to execute a vehement nod. "I hate him so much
I--I could just _kill_ any other girl that tried to take him!" With a
wild sob the face burrowed again into the soft shoulder.
"Well, they'll try, all right."
The head rose again, startled eyes, big and brown, staring from the
glass. "Do you--really think so?"
"What do you expect--a nice boy like that to mope and pine for the rest
of his life with ten million girls of marriageable age running loose in
the United States? What brought him here, anyway--bolting to escape one
girl's noose. Take my advice and rope him quick."
"But I'm promised, now, to Ramon."
"Call it off."
"Oh no." Sitting up straight, she shook her head. "I cannot ruin his
life."
"Hum!" The widow coughed. "You cannot ruin his life? So you intend to
bless it by devoting to his service affections that belong to another?
Also to cut him off from the greatest thing in the world--the real love
of some other woman? Ruin his life, indeed? Lee, I always credited you
with a little sense."
"There is something in that." She snatched at the hope. "The best thing
is to tell him I don't love him and leave it to him to decide."
"And he'll do it, have no fear!" The widow tossed her head. "Ramon's
nice, but he cannot rise above his race, and you know very well there's
neither reason nor justice nor the instinct of fairness in it. Fancy a
Mexican giving up a girl because she loves another! He'd resent even the
suggestion, take his revenge after marriage."