"I guess I ought to understand, Anne, but I've got so much to learn. Please make allowances for me and explain." His tone was humble and self-accusing.
"This début ball is just their way of putting me on the marriage market--duly labelled and proclaimed. I don't fancy being put up at auction, and it doesn't even seem quite honest. It's not a genuine offer of sale, because it's all fixed in their own minds. Morgan is to bid me in when the time comes."
Boone's face grew sombre, and his strong mouth line stiffened over his resolute chin.
"God knows that arrangement is going to come to grief," he said in a low voice that shook with feeling.
"Not if Lochinvar doesn't come to the party," she retorted with a swift change to the riffle of laughing eyes. "I'm letting sleeping dogs lie for the present, Boone, because it's the best way. There isn't any doubt of you in my heart. You know that, but it will be a long time before you can marry me. Meantime,--" the battle light shone for a flashing instant in her pupils--"I'm standing out for one thing. They've got to give you full acknowledgment. Everybody that accepts me must accept you--and unless you claim recognition, they won't do it."
Boone rose and came over. He took her hands in his own and looked down at her, and, though he smiled, his voice was full of worship.
"Lochinvar will come, dearest," he declared. "He'll come in full war-paint, and nobody but himself will know how stiff he's scared."
It was the morning after that that Boone sat again as a defendant in the police court, flanked by Morgan and the Colonel. He was on trial for shooting and wounding, and there had been broadly circulated hints that his prosecution would be gruelling enough to dissuade bold and adverse spirits on election day. Yet when the case was reached on the docket, Henry Simpson, whose finger was in every pie as a master pastry cook for the intrenched element, arose from his place at the right hand of the court's prosecutor and sonorously cleared his throat.
"May it please your Honour," he announced, with the rhetorical dignity of a Roman senator--or a criminal lawyer's idea of a Roman senator--"the prosecuting witness harbours no feeling of rancour in this affair, despite the injuries which he sustained. The defendant seems to have been led astray in the hot enthusiasm of his youth by older heads. Having no wish to punish a cat's-paw for the responsibility of his mentors, we move the dismissal of the accused."