She had thoughts and notions of the world which
were, to his Southern training, hardly feminine. And yet even they
piqued him and spurred him like the sight of an untrained colt. He had
not seen her falter yet beneath his glances or tremble at his touch. All
this he desired--ardently desired. But did he desire her as a wife? He
rather thought that he did. And if so he must speak today.
There was his father, too, to reckon with. Colonel Cresswell, with the
perversity of the simple-minded, had taken the sudden bettering of their
fortunes as his own doing. He had foreseen; he had stuck it out; his
credit had pulled the thing through; and the trust had learned a thing
or two about Southern gentlemen.
Toward John Taylor he perceptibly warmed. His business methods were such
as a Cresswell could never stoop to; but he was a man of his word, and
Colonel Cresswell's correspondence with Mr. Easterly opened his eyes to
the beneficent ideals of Northern capital. At the same time he could not
consider the Easterlys and the Taylors and such folk as the social
equals of the Cresswells, and his prejudice on this score must still be
reckoned with.
Below, Mary Taylor lingered on the porch in strange uncertainty. Harry
Cresswell would soon be coming downstairs. Did she want him to find her?
She liked him frankly, undisguisedly; but from the love she knew to be
so near her heart she recoiled in perturbation.
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