Page:Harper's New Monthly Magazine - v109.djvu/994

922 set a wonder growing in his mother's face. His father understood, and together they had trained the boy for his work. He went to school and then to Paris, mere lad in years, man in perception and expression. It was a triumph from teacher to teacher, and then came John Hepner and a master! 'Twas a friendship, too, for Doane felt the heart of the other man on the instant—the heart that critics said he had painted out. Much work—for the boy was earnest,—recognition immediate from the start, and he came back one year for a glimpse of the two in Belset and a long winter with Hepner in Boston.

Joanna Severn had met him in Hepner's studio—he was using Tucker's that month—a rather overdone room, with too much color and contrast, but the gorgeous hangings made a charming background for the slender figure in furs, and the boy came forward at the wave of Hepner's hand to greet her. He had bright teeth and a laughing eye, and his hair curled crisply in front. She was very gracious, and the boy found her delightful and paintable. As for Joanna, she couldn't have altogether told you what she found the boy. He stirred a new emotion. She turned to Hepner as he left the room.

"Won't you bring Mr. Doane with you on Friday? I shall be glad to see him."

So Doane went, and again, and often, and it became a habit; the days grew longer, and the spring came out of the east, and Joanna knew that it was love; and the lad spoke, and Joanna listened, and gave herself the luxury of a hesitation, and then the ecstasy of telling him that she loved him too. And, after that hour of wonder, she had gone to her room and written to her sister, which was à la mode and thoughtful, but the boy had walked up and down the path of the park outside and smoked a whole pocketful of cigars, and thought long thoughts—and some of them were his own thoughts, but most of them were the thoughts of the ages.

And now they were sitting, they two, in a victoria on their way from the Rexton station. It was a radiant afternoon, and Joanna had insisted on Harry's taking off his hat, and the sun bronzed his curls, and he held her hand under a fold of her dress as they turned in at the avenue.

Burleigh was on the top of a sharp hill, balsam-lined, with hemlocks beyond,—Mrs. McTavish lived in terror of this hill, and invariably walked up and down. The road wound through a pine grove and ended rather abruptly at the door of a lumbering brown house with mansard roof and spreading wings that Edith Louden said couldn't have been more aptly named. But it was covered with vines and flowers, and on the rocks below pounded the sea.

The door was wide open as they drove up, and Mrs. McTavish came forward. Doane helped Miss Severn out, and she held a hand of each. "I'm so glad to see you,"—her smile was embracing. "Come in and have your tea. We are all here, you see—the Bryces and Edith Louden, Judge Howard, you know, and an old college friend of my husband's from Detroit, Mr. and Mrs. Bourne, and Miss Bourne—"

The young girl started forward. She was a pretty little thing with a pink face that flushed easily.

"Why, it's my Mr. Doane," she laughed, as he took her hand and laughed too. "You see, I didn't know he was the one,"—she turned to Joanna. "I didn't even know he wasn't in Paris!"

The older woman sharpened her look. "Oh no; he's been in Boston all winter. Did you know one another in Europe, then?"

Doane turned an answer. "Well, rather, Nanna," he said. "We used to be fellow students."

The girl's laugh rippled again and her color deepened. "He didn't think he could paint, and found out he could. I thought I could, and found out I couldn't!"

And then two men came in from the golf-field for their tea, with Tom McTavish close behind.

"Oh, by the way, Aunt Nanna"—Daisy Bourne turned at the title and Joanna ruffled:—"just met Perkins on the avenue, and he said your trunk hadn't come. It can't now till the 8.15."

So Joanna had to limit her preparations to a clean face and a fresh pocket-handkerchief and go to dinner in her