The Happiest Time of Their Lives Part 45

"A former beauty thinks she can put anything over, and in a way she can.

I feel rather friendly toward her."

The Farrons had decided while they were dressing that after dinner they would retire to Vincent's study and give the lovers a few minutes to themselves.

Left alone, Pete and Mathilde stood looking seriously at each other, and then at the room which only a few weeks before had witnessed their first prolonged talk.

"I never saw your mother look a quarter as beautiful as she does this evening," said Wayne.

"Isn't she marvelous, the way she can make up for everything when she wants?" Mathilde answered with enthusiasm.

Pete shook his head.

"She can never make up for one thing."

"O Pete!"

"She can never give me back my first instinctive, egotistical, divine conviction that there was every reason why you should love me. I shall always hear her voice saying, 'But why should Mathilde love you?' And I shall never know a good answer."

"What," cried Mathilde, "don't you know the answer to that! I do. Mama doesn't, of course. Mama loves people for reasons outside themselves: she loves me because I'm her child, and Grandpapa because he's her father, and Mr. Farron because she thinks he's strong. If she didn't think him strong, I'm not sure she'd love him. But _I_ love _you_ for being just as you are, because you are my choice. Whatever you do or say, that can't be changed--"

The door opened, and Pringle entered with a tray in his hand, and his eyes began darting about in search of empty coffee-cups. Mathilde and Pete were aware of a common feeling of guilt, not that they were concealing the cups, though there was something of that accusation in Pringle's expression, but because the pause between them was so obvious.

So Mathilde said suddenly:

"Pringle, Mr. Wayne and I are engaged to be married."

"Indeed, Miss?" said Pringle, with a smile; and so seldom was this phenomenon seen to take place that Wayne noted for the first time that Pringle's teeth were false. "I'm delighted to hear it; and you, too, sir.

This is a bad world to go through alone."

"Do you approve of marriage, Pringle?" said Wayne.

The cups, revealing themselves one by one, were secured as Pringle answered:

"In my cla.s.s of life, sir, we don't give much time to considering what we approve of and disapprove of. But young people are all alike when they're first engaged, always wondering how it is going to turn out, and hoping the other party won't know that they're wondering. But when you get old, and you look back on all the mistakes and the disadvantages and the sacrifices, you'll find that you won't be able to imagine that you could have gone through it with any other person--in spite of her faults," he added almost to himself.

When he was gone, Pete and Mathilde turned and kissed each other.

"When we get old--" they murmured.

They really believed that it could never happen to them.