"Yes," she said, "that was it. And Mrs. Matilda and Phoebe motored out
with him and David went on his horse. I am making calls, only I didn't. I
stopped to--" and she glanced down with wild confusion, for the book
spread out before her was the major's old family Bible, and the type was
too bold to fail to declare its identity to his quick glance.
"Don't worry," he hastened to say, "I don't mind. I read it myself
sometimes, when I'm in a certain mood."
"It was for David--he wanted to read something to Phoebe," she answered
in ravishing confusion, and pointed to the open page.
Thus Andrew Sevier was forced by old Fate to come near her and bend with
her over the book. The tip of her exquisite finger ran along the lines
that have figured in the woman question for many an age.
"'For her price is far above rubies. The heart of her husband doth safely
trust in her'"--and so on down the page she led him.
"And that was what the trouble was about," she said when they had read
the last word in the last line. She raised her eyes to his with laughter
in their depths. "It was a very dreadful battle and Phoebe won. The major
found this for him to read to her and she said she did not intend to go
into the real estate business for her husband or to rise while it was yet
night to give him his breakfast. Aren't they funny, _funny_?" and she
fairly rippled with delight at her recollection of the vanquishing of the
intrepid David.
"The standards for a wife were a bit strenuous in those days," he
answered, smiling down on her. "I'm afraid Dave will have trouble finding
one on those terms. And yet--" he paused and there was a touch of mockery
in his tone.
"I think that a woman could be very, very happy fulfilling every one of
those conditions if she were woman enough," answered Caroline Darrah
Brown, looking straight into his eyes with her beautiful, disconcerting,
dangerous young seriousness.
Andrew picked up his manuscript with the mental attitude of catching at a
straw.
"Oh," she said quickly, "you were going to read to the major, weren't
you?" And the entreaty in her eyes was as young as her seriousness; as
young as that of a very little girl begging for a wonder tale. The heart
of a man may be of stone but even flint flies a spark.
Andrew Sevier flushed under his pallor and ruffled his pages back to a
serenade he had written, with which the star for whom the play was being
made expected to exploit a deep-timbred voice in a recitative
vocalization. And while he read it to her slowly, Fate finessed on the
third round.