y."
The young arraigner, hearing, gazed unconvinced. She pushed the weight
of her hair back off her forehead, as she always did when impatient.
"Came to love him dearly." With that mere affection which grows from
association, and dependence and habit.
The girl sitting on the window-sill in the sunshine drew a long
breath. There was more in life than these two had found; all
unknowingly, they had proved it.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Charlotte kept them with her the week, then Molly turned restless.
"I can't stand hearing another thing about Willy, Malise," she
declared. "I think he's a very dictatorial and outspoken person
myself."
So Molly and Alexina and Celeste went back to the hotel, which had
filled during the week of their absence. There was life and bustle in
the halls as they went in and, from their windows up-stairs, they
could see the lake gay with sail-boats.
The talk down-stairs concerned dances, picnics, fishing parties. The
somnolent Molly awoke, languor fell from her and she stepped to the
centre of the gay little whirl, the embodied spirit of festivity. Mr.
Henderson, incongruous element, was there, too, with deliberate
election it would seem, for Molly's eyes did no inviting or
encouraging. She did not need him in capacity of attendant or diverter
these days, and it was clear that in any other capacity he embarrassed
her. But he was not deterred because of that.
"You are coming to church, remember," he told her on Sunday morning.
Molly did not even play at archness with him now; she looked timid.
And at the hour she went, and Alexina with her. They had heard him
officiate before, and it seemed the mere performance of the law; but
into the dogmatic assertions of his discourse to-day glowed that fire
which is called inspiration. The Reverend Henderson was living these
days.
Molly, slim and elegant in her finery, moved once or twice in the pew.
Alexina could not quite tell if she was listening. But she was. "Dear
me," she said, from under the shadow of her lace parasol, as they
walked home, "how wearing it must be to be so--er--intense." She spoke
lightly, but she shivered a little. The Reverend Henderson had laid
stress upon his text, "In the midst of life we are in death!"
As they went up the hotel steps Molly turned and looked around her and
Alexina turned too, since it was Molly's mood. The sky was blue, the
air breathed with life and glow and sparkle. There was a taste almost
of s
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