Page:Across the Stream.djvu/206

196 "And who was your visitor?" he asked.

"Lord Harlow," said she very softly, and paused.

Jessie had put down her paper, and Helena could feel that she was listening in tense expectation. She did not look round, but firmly laid her hand on Jessie's, clasping it. The other she tucked into her father's arm, and leaned her head against his shoulder.

"Daddy, I had a long talk to him," she said, "and he is coming here again to-morrow morning. At least, he did the talking, and I only spoke when he had said what he had come to say. Oh, my dear, I am so happy, so awfully, awfully happy."

Helena felt that she had done that quite beautifully. If she had thought about it for ever so long, she could not have improved on it. A few boisterous ejaculations from her father followed, and, finding that Jessie had disengaged her hand, she completed the circle round her father's arm. Then presently she rose, with smiling and suffused face, just kissed him, and left the room.

"Well, I'm sure that's the best bit of news I've heard for a long time," he said. "Certainly he is a good deal older than she, but there's no harm in that. I was twenty years older than your mother, Jessie. And what do you think of it all?"

"I think Helena will be very happy," said Jessie.

"So do I, and I'm sure she deserves to be. If she's as kind and loving to her husband as she has been to her father, we shan't hear any complaints. Dear me! What a bit of news!"

He was silent a moment.

"How we old folk get out of touch with young people!" he said. "If I had been told to guess who it was who would ask Helena to be his wife, I should have said it was Archie. Didn't you think that Archie was very fond of her?"

Mixed with Jessie's misery for Archie's sake, and