None Other Gods eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 378 pages of information about None Other Gods.

None Other Gods eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 378 pages of information about None Other Gods.

“Ah! yes.”

Then Jenny mounted from a rock (Lady Richard held the mare’s head and settled the habit), and rode slowly away downhill.

(III)

Dick approached the Rectory next day a little before twelve o’clock with as much excitement in his heart as he ever permitted to himself.

Dick is a good fellow—­I haven’t a word to say against him, except perhaps that he used to think that to be a Guiseley, and to have altogether sixteen hundred a year and to live in a flat in St. James’s, and to possess a pointed brown beard and melancholy brown eyes and a reposeful manner, relieved him from all further effort.  I have wronged him, however; he had made immense efforts to be proficient at billiards, and had really succeeded; and, since his ultimate change of fortune, has embraced even further responsibilities in a conscientious manner.

Of course, he had been in love before in a sort of way; but this was truly different.  He wished to marry Jenny very much indeed....  That she was remarkably sensible, really beautiful and eminently presentable, of course, paved the way; but, if I understand the matter rightly, these were not the only elements in the case.  It was the genuine thing.  He did not quite know how he would face the future if she refused him; and he was sufficiently humble to be in doubt.

The neat maid told him at the door that Miss Launton had given directions that he was to be shown into the garden if he came....  No; Miss Launton was in the morning-room, but she should be told at once.  So Dick strolled across the lawn and sat down by the garden table.

He looked at the solemn, dreaming house in the late summer sunshine; he observed a robin issue out from a lime tree and inspect him sideways; and then another robin issue from another lime tree and drive the first one away.  Then he noticed a smear of dust on his own left boot, and flicked it off with a handkerchief.  Then, as he put his handkerchief away again, he saw Jenny coming out from the drawing-room window.

She looked really extraordinarily beautiful as she came slowly across towards him and he stood to meet her.  She was bare-headed, but her face was shadowed by the great coils of hair.  She was in a perfectly plain pink dress, perfectly cut, and she carried herself superbly.  She looked just a trifle paler than yesterday, he thought, and there was a very reserved, steady kind of question in her eyes. (I am sorry to be obliged to go on saying this sort of thing about Jenny every time she comes upon the scene; but it is the sort of thing that everyone is obliged to go on thinking whenever she makes her appearance.)

“I’ve got a good deal to say,” said Dick, after they had sat a moment or two.  “May I say it right out to the end?”

“Why, certainly,” said Jenny.

Dick leaned back and crossed one knee over the other.  His manner was exactly right—­at any rate, it was exactly what he wished it to be, and all through his little speech he preserved it.  It was quite restrained, extremely civilized, and not at all artificial.  It was his method of presenting a fact—­the fact that he really was in love with this girl—­and was in his best manner.  There was a lightness of touch about this method of his, but it was only on the surface.

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None Other Gods from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.