“And when he came—­oh, when you came home,” breathed Mrs. Galland to the portrait, “with the scar on your cheek, how tanned and strong your hands were and how white mine as you held them so fast!  And then”—­she smiled in peaceful content—­“then I did faint.  I am not ashamed of it—­I did!”

“Without any danger of falling far!” said Lanstron happily.

“Or with much of a jar!” added Marta.

“You prattling children!” gasped Mrs. Galland, her cheeks flushing.  “Do you think that I fainted purposely?  I would have been ashamed to my dying day if I had feigned it!”

“And you did not faint in the presence of the dead and dying!” said Marta thoughtfully, wonderingly, leaning nearer to her mother, her eyes athirst and drinking.

“But I believe it is only a wispy-waspy sort of girl that faints at all these days.  They’re all so businesslike,” said Mrs. Galland—­“so businesslike that they are ceasing to marry.”

How many girls she had known to wait a little too long!  If anything could awaken Marta to action it ought to be war, which was a great match-maker forty years ago.  The thought of a lover in danger had precipitated wavering hearts into engagements.  Marta’s mood was such that she received the hint openly and playfully to-day.

“Oh, I don’t despair!” she exclaimed, straightening her shoulders and drawing in her chin with a mock display of bravery.  “I believe it was in an English novel that I read that any woman without a hump can get any man she sets out for.  It is a matter of determination and concentration and a wise choice of vulnerable objects.”

“Marta, Marta!” gasped Mrs. Galland.  In her tone was a volume of lamentation.

“Now that I’m twenty-seven mother is ready to take any risk on my behalf, if it is masculine.  By the time I’m thirty she will be ready to give me to a peddler with a harelip!” she said mischievously.

“A peddler with a harelip!  Marta, will you never be serious?”

“Some day, mother,” Marta went on, “when we find the right man, you hold him while I propose, and together we’ll surely—­”

Mrs. Galland could not resist laughing, which was one way to stop further absurdities—­absurdities concealing a nervous strain they happened to be this time—­while Colonel Lanstron was a little flushed and ill at ease.  She had a truly silvery laugh—­the kind no longer in fashion among the gentry since golden laughs came in,—­that went well with the dimples dipping into her pink cheeks.

Contrary to custom, she did not excuse herself immediately after luncheon for her afternoon nap, but kept battling with her nods until nature was victorious and the fell fast asleep.  Marta, grown restless with impatience, suggested to Lanstron that they stroll in the garden, and they took the path past the house toward the castle tower, stopping in an arbor with high hedges on either side around a statue of Mercury.