CHAPTER XV

CORINNA OBSERVES

Yes, Patty was in love, this Corinna decided after a single glance.  The girl appeared to have changed miraculously over-night, for her hard brightness had melted in the warmth of some glowing flame that burned at her heart.  Never had she looked so Ariel-like and elusive; never had she brought so hauntingly to Corinna’s memory the loveliness of youth and spring that is vivid and fleeting.

“Can it be that Stephen is really in earnest?” asked the older woman of her disturbed heart; and the next instant, shaking her wise head, she added, “Poor little redbird!  What does she know of life outside of a cedar tree?”

At luncheon the Governor, in an effort to hide some perfectly evident anxiety, over-shot the mark as usual, Corinna reflected.  It was his way, she had observed, to cover a mental disturbance with pretended hilarity.  There was, as always when he was unnatural and ill at ease, a touch of coarseness in his humour, a grotesque exaggeration of his rhetorical style.  With his mind obviously distracted he told several anecdotes of dubious wit; and while he related them Miss Spencer sat primly silent with her gaze on her plate.  Only Corinna laughed, as she laughed at any honest jest however out of place.  After all, if you began to judge men by the quality of their jokes where would it lead you?

Patty, with her eyes drooping beneath her black lashes, sat lost in a day dream.  She dressed now, by Corinna’s advice, in straight slim gowns of serge or velvet; and to-day she was wearing a scant little frock of blue serge, with a wide white collar that gave her the look of a delicate boy.  There were wonderful possibilities in the girl, Corinna mused, looking her over.  She had not a single beautiful feature, except her remarkable eyes; and yet the softness and vagueness of her face lent a poetic and impressionistic charm to her appearance.  “In that dress she looks as if she had stepped out of the Middle Ages, and might step back again at any minute,” thought Corinna.  “I wonder if I can be mistaken in Stephen, and if he is seriously in love with her?”

“Patty is grooming me for the White House,” remarked Vetch, with his hearty laugh which sounded a trifle strained and affected to-day.  “She thinks it probable that I shall be President.”

“Why not, Father?” asked Patty loyally.  “They couldn’t find a better one.”

“Do you hear that?” demanded the Governor in delight.  “That is what one coming voter thinks of me.”

“And a good many others, I haven’t a doubt,” replied Corinna, with her cheerful friendliness.  Through the windows of the dining-room she could see the long grape arbour and the gray boughs of the crepe myrtle trees in the garden.