Several times he read it over, trying to extract some comfort from it,
and finding it at last in the fact that Ethelyn had a headache, too.
This was the reason for her seeming indifference; and in wishing himself
able to go to her, Richard forgot in part his own pain, and fell into a
quiet sleep, which did him untold good. It was three o'clock when at
last he rose, knowing pretty well all that had been doing during the
hours of his seclusion in the darkened room. The "Van Buren set" had
come, and he overheard Mrs. Markham's Esther saying to Aunt Barbara's
Betsy, when she came for the silver cake-basket, that "Mr. Frank seemed
in mighty fine spirits, considering all the flirtations he used to have
with Miss Ethelyn."
This was the first intimation Richard had received of a flirtation, and
even now it did not strike him unpleasantly. They were cousins, he
reflected, and as such had undoubtedly been very familiar with each
other. It was natural, and nothing for which he need care. He did not
care, either, as he deliberately began to make his wedding toilet,
thinking himself, when it was completed, that he was looking unusually
well in the entire new suit which his cousin, Mrs. Woodhull, had
insisted upon his getting in New York, when on his way home in April he
had gone that way and told her of his approaching marriage. It was a
splendid suit, made after the most approved style, and costing a sum
which he had kept secret from his mother, who, nevertheless, guessed
somewhere near the truth, and thought the Olney tailor would have suited
him quite as well at a quarter the price, or even Mrs. Jones, who,
having been a tailoress when a young girl in Vermont, still kept up her
profession to a limited extent, retaining her "press-board" and "goose,"
and the mammoth shears which had cut Richard's linen coat after a
Chicago pattern of not the most recent date Richard thought very little
about his personal appearance--too little, in fact--but he felt a glow
of satisfaction now as he contemplated himself in the glass, feeling
only that Ethelyn would be pleased to see him thus.
And Ethelyn was pleased. She had half expected the old coat of she did
not know how many years' make, and there was a fierce pang of pain in
her heart as she imagined Frank's cool criticisms, and saw, in fancy,
the contrast between the two men. So when Judge Markham alighted at the
gate, and from her window she took in at a glance his tout ensemble, the
revulsion of feeling was so great that the glad tears sprang to her
eyes, and a brighter, happier look broke over her face than had been
there for many weeks. She was not present when Frank was introduced to
him; but when next she met her cousin, he said to her, in his usual
off-hand way, "I say, Ethie, he is pretty well got up for a Westerner.
But for his eyes and teeth I should never have known him for the chap
who wore short pants and stove-pipe hat with the butternut-colored
crape. Who was he in mourning for anyway?"