"Olive," cried Mrs. Easterfield, "you don't mean you are going to marry Mr. Locker?"

"You forget," said Olive, "that I told you I have not made up my mind yet. But although I have not come to a decision, I have a leaning toward one of them. The more I think of it the more I incline in the direction of my old love."

"Mr. Hemphill!" exclaimed Mrs. Easterfield. "Olive, you are crazy, or else you are joking in a very disagreeable manner. There could be no one more unfit for you than he is."

"I am not crazy, and I am not joking," replied the girl, "and I think Rupert would suit me very well. You see, I think a great deal more of Rupert than I do of Mr. Hemphill, although the latter gentleman has excellent points. He is commonplace, and, above everything else, I want a commonplace husband. I want some one to soothe me, and quiet me, and to give me ballast. If there is anything out of the way to be done I want to do it myself. I am sure he is in love with me, for his anxious efforts to make me believe that the frank avowal of my early affection had no effect upon him proves that he was very much affected. I believe that he is truly in love with me."

Mrs. Easterfield's sharp eyes had seen this, and she had nothing to say.

"I believe," continued Olive, "that a retrospect love will be a better foundation for conjugal happiness than any other sort of affection. One can always look back to it no matter what happens, and be happy in the memory of it. It would be something distinct which could never be interfered with. You can't imagine what an earnest and absorbing love I once had for that man!"

Mrs. Easterfield sprang to her feet. "Olive Asher," she cried, "I can't listen to you if you talk in this way!"

"Well, then," said Olive, "if you object so much to Rupert--you must not forget that it would be Rupert that I would really marry if I became the wife of Mr. Hemphill--do you advise me to take Mr. Locker? And I will tell you this, he is not to be rudely set aside; he has warm-hearted points which I did not suspect at first. I will tell you what he just said to me. As I was coming up-stairs he hurried toward me, and his face showed that he was very anxious to speak to me. So before he could utter a word, I told him that he was too early; that his hour had not yet arrived. Then that good fellow said to me that he had seen I was in trouble, and that he had been informed it had been caused by bad news from my family. He had made no inquiries because he did not wish to intrude upon my private affairs, and all he wished to say now was that while my mind was disturbed and worried he did not intend to present his own affairs to my attention, even though I had fixed regular times for his doing so. But although he wished me to understand that I need not fear his making love to me just at this time, he wanted me to remember that his love was still burning as brightly as ever, and would be again offered me just as soon as he would be warranted in doing so."

"And what did you say to that?" asked Mrs. Easterfield.

"I felt like patting him on the head," Olive answered, "but instead of doing that I shook his hand just as warmly as I could, and told him I should not forget his consideration and good feeling."

Mrs. Easterfield sighed. "You have joined him fast to your car," she said, "and yet, even if there were no one else, he would be impossible."

"Why so?" asked Olive quickly. "I have always liked him, and now I like him ever so much better. To be sure he is queer; but then he is so much queerer than I am that perhaps in comparison I might take up the part of commonplace partner. Besides, he has money enough to live on. He told me that when he first addressed me. He said he would never ask any woman to live on pickled verse feet, and he has also told me something of his family, which must be a good one."

"Olive," said Mrs. Easterfield, "I don't believe at all in the necessity or the sense in your precipitating plans of marrying. It is all airy talk, anyway. You can't ask a man to step up and marry you in order that you may sit down and write a letter to your father. But if you are thinking of marrying, or rather of preparing to marry at some suitable time, why, in the name of everything that is reasonable, don't you take Mr. Lancaster? He is as far above the other young men you have met here as the mountains are above the plains; he belongs to another cla.s.s altogether. He is a thoroughly fine young man, and has a most honorable profession with good prospects, and I know he loves you. You need not ask me how I know it--it is always easy for a woman to find out things like that. Now, here is a prospective husband for you whose cause I should advocate. In fact, I should be delighted to see you married to him. He possesses every quality which would make you a good husband."

Olive smiled. "You seem to know a great deal about him," said she, "and I a.s.sure you that so far as he himself is concerned, I have no objections to him, except that I think he might have had the courage to come and tell me the truth this morning, whatever it is."

"Perhaps he has not found out the truth yet," quickly suggested Mrs.

Easterfield.

Olive fixed her eyes upon her companion and for a few moments reflected, but presently she shook her head.

"No, that can not be," she answered. "He would have let me know he had been obliged to wait. Oh, no, it is all settled, and we can drop that subject. But as for Mr. Lancaster, his connections would make any thought of him impossible. He, and his father, too, are both close friends of my uncle, and he would be a constant communication between me and that woman unless there should be a quarrel, which I don't wish to cause. No, I want to leave everything of that sort as far behind me as it used to be in front of me, and as Professor Lancaster is mixed up with it I could not think of having anything to do with him."

Mrs. Easterfield was silent. She was trying to make up her mind whether this girl were talking sense or nonsense. What she said seemed to be extremely nonsensical, but as she said it, it was difficult to believe that she did not consider it to be entirely rational.

"Well," said Olive, "you have objected to two of my candidates, and I positively decline the one you offer, so we have left only the diplomat.

He has proposed, and he has not yet received a definite answer. You have told me yourself that he belongs to an aristocratic family in Austria, and I am sure that would be a grand match. We have talked together a great deal, and he seems to like the things I like. I should see plenty of court life and high society, for he will soon be transferred from this legation, and if I take him I shall go to some foreign capital. He is very sharp and ambitious, and I have no doubt that some day he will be looked upon as a distinguished foreigner. Now, as it is the ambition of many American girls to marry distinguished foreigners, this alliance is certainly worthy of due consideration."

"Stuff!" said Mrs. Easterfield.

Olive was not annoyed, and replied very quietly: "It is not stuff. You must know young women who have married foreigners and who did not do anything like so well as if they had married rising diplomats."

Mrs. Blynn now knocked at the door on urgent household business.

"I shall want to see you again about all this, Olive," said Mrs.

Easterfield as they parted.

"Of course," replied the girl, "whenever you want to."

"Mrs. Blynn," said the lady of the house, "before you mention what you have come to talk about, please tell one of the men to put a horse to a buggy and come to the house. I want to send a message by him."

The letter which was speedily on its way to Mr. Richard Lancaster was a very brief one. It simply asked the young gentleman to come to Broadstone, with bad news or good news, or without any news at all. It was absolutely necessary that the writer should see him, and in order that there might be no delay she sent a conveyance for him. Moreover, she added, it would give her great pleasure if Mr. Lancaster would come prepared to spend a couple of days at her house. She felt sure good Captain Asher would spare him for that short time. She believed that at this moment more gentlemen were needed at Broadstone, and, although she did not go on to say that she thought d.i.c.k was not having a fair chance at this very important crisis, that is what she expected the young man to understand.

Just before luncheon, at the time when Claude Locker might have been urging his suit had he been less kind-hearted and generous, Olive found an opportunity to say a few words to Mrs. Easterfield.

"A capital idea has come into my head," she said. "What do you think of holding a compet.i.tive examination among these young men?"

"More stuff, and more nonsense!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Mrs. Easterfield. "I never knew any one to trifle with serious subjects as you are trifling with your future."

"I am not trifling," said Olive. "Of course, I don't mean that I should hold an examination, but that you should. You know that parents--foreign parents, I mean--make all sorts of examinations of the qualifications and merits of candidates for the hands of their daughters, and I should be very grateful if you would be at least that much of a mother to me."

"No examination would be needed," said the other quickly; "I should decide upon Mr. Lancaster without the necessity of any questions or deliberations."

"But he is not a candidate," said Olive; "he has been ruled out.

However," she added with a little laugh, "nothing can be done just now, for they have not all entered themselves in the compet.i.tion; Mr.

Hemphill has not proposed yet."

At that instant the rest of the family joined them on their way to luncheon.

The meal was scarcely over when Olive disappeared up-stairs, but soon came down attired in a blue sailor suit, which she had not before worn at Broadstone, and although the ladies of that house had been astonished at the number of costumes this navy girl carried in her unostentatious baggage, this was a new surprise to them.

"Mr. Hemphill and I are going boating," said Olive to Mrs. Easterfield.

"Olive!" exclaimed the other.

"What is there astonishing about it?" asked the girl. "I have been out boating with Mr. Locker, and it did not amaze you. You need not be afraid; Mr. Hemphill says he has had a good deal of practise in rowing, and if he does not understand the management of a boat I am sure I do.

It is only for an hour, and we shall be ready for anything that the rest of you are going to do this afternoon."

With this, away she went, skipping over the rocks and gra.s.s, down to the river's edge, followed by Mr. Hemphill, who could scarcely believe he was in a world of common people and common things, while he, in turn, was followed by the mental anathemas of a poet and a diplomat.

_CHAPTER XIX_

_The Captain and d.i.c.k Lancaster desert the Toll-Gate._

When Captain Asher, in an angry mood, left his young friend and guest and went out into his barnyard and his fields in order to quiet his soul by the consideration of agricultural subjects, he met with but little success. He looked at his pigs, but he did not notice their plump condition; he glanced at his two cows, cropping the gra.s.s in the little meadow, but it did not impress him that they also were in fine condition; nor did he care whether the pasture were good or not. He looked at this; and he looked at that; and then he folded his arms and looked at the distant mountains. Suddenly he turned on his heel, walked straight to the stable, harnessed his mare to the buggy, and, without saying a word to anybody, drove out of the gate, and on to Glenford.

d.i.c.k Lancaster, who was in the arbor, looked in amazement after the captain's departing buggy, and old Jane, with tears in her eyes, came out and spoke to him.

"Isn't this dreadful" she said to him. "Supper with that woman and there all night, and back again as soon as he can get off this mornin'!"

"Perhaps he is not going to her house," d.i.c.k suggested. "He may have business in town which he forgot yesterday."

"If he'd had it he'd forgot it," replied the old woman. "But he hadn't none. He's gone to Maria Port's, and he may bring her back with him, married tight and fast, for all you or me knows. It would be just like his sailor fashion. When the captain's got anything to do he just does it sharp and quick."