And so the major found them an hour or more later, he standing in the
failing light turning the pages and she looking up at him, listening,
with her cheek upon her interlaced fingers and her elbows resting on the
old book. The old gentleman stood at the door a long time before he
interrupted them and after Andrew had gone down to put Caroline into her
motorcar, which had been waiting for hours, he lingered at the window
looking out into the dusk.
"'For love is as strong as death,'" he quoted to himself as he turned to
the table and slowly closed the book and returned it to its place. "'And
many waters can not quench love, neither can the floods drown it.'"
"Solomon was very great--and human," he further observed.
Then after absorbing an hour or two of communion with some musty old
papers and a tattered volume of uncertain age, the major was interrupted
by Mrs. Matilda as she came in from her drive. She was a vision in her
soft gray reception gown, and her gray hat, with its white velvet rose,
was tipped over her face at an angle that denoted the spirit of
adventure.
"I'm so glad to get back, Major," she said as she stood and regarded him
with affection beaming in her bright eyes. "Sometimes I hurry home to be
sure you are safe here. I don't see you as much as I do out at Seven Oaks
and I'm lonely going places away from you."
"Don't you know it isn't the style any longer for a woman to carry her
husband in her pocket, Matilda," he answered. "What would Mrs. Cherry
Lawrence think of you?"
Mrs. Buchanan laughed as she seated herself by him for the moment.
"I've just come from Milly's," she said. "I left Caroline there. And
Hobson was with her; they had been out motoring on the River Road. Do
you suppose--it looks as if perhaps--?"
"My dear Matilda," answered the major, "I never give or take a tip on a
love race. The Almighty endows women with inscrutable eyes and the smile
of the Sphynx for purposes of self-preservation, I take it, so a man
wastes time trying to solve a woman-riddle. However, Hobson Capers is
running a risk of losing much valuable time is the guess I chance on the
issue in question."
"And Peyton Kendrick and that nice Yankee boy and--"
"All bunched, all bunched at the second post! There's a dark horse
running and he doesn't know it himself. God help him!" he added under his
breath as she turned to speak to Tempie.
"If you don't want her to marry Hobson whom do you choose?" she said
returning to the subject. "I wish--I wish--but of course it is
impossible, and I'm glad, as it is, that Andrew is indifferent."