He sighed deeply. Was it over Waverley Cooke, or was he thinking of another wreck?
As soon as the polls closed after an exciting contest--for the opposition had been very determined--Edgar turned his back upon the bustling crowds, and briskly walked away.
Helen met him at the door, though she had not expected him that evening. Somehow she had acquired a habit of always discovering his approach and meeting him in the vestibule, a convenient place for the exchange of certain quasi masonic--but we must not intrude upon privacy with prying eyes.
As she was not expecting him, she was not dressed to receive him, a circumstance in which he rejoiced mightily, her careless costume seeming in his eyes to set off her beauty ravishingly.
She wore a loose gown of a thin, limp goods, Pompeiian red in hue, with flowing sleeves of white, equally limp, and a broad, starchless collar of white to match the sleeves. The gown was belted in at the waist with a rope girdle of dull, oxidized silver. The costume seemed to cling lovingly to the lines of her superb length, and Braine was at the moment certain that he should never permit her to wear any other. "Man-like," was her commentary, when he told her this a few weeks later.
"You are weary," she said, "and it is very warm. Loll here by the windows. No, not in that chair, it is rickety, and you are so big and strong I always expect weak things to break with you. My will did, you know, when you made up your mind to marry me. No, no, you mustn't, now! people are passing."
What this last injunction and remark had to do with the subject of conversation, I cannot make out, but that is what Helen said, hurriedly, as she drew back a little.
"Now you shall not talk to me," she said, as she sank in graceful folds upon the floor, with an ease which made one doubt the existence of bones in her tall person. "You are tired, and I'll do the talking. What shall the subject be?"
"Tell me of yourself. What have you been doing and thinking?"
"Nibbling pickles, sewing, trying to read Browning because you told me to, and carrying pins in my mouth."
"I thought you promised me not to put pins in your mouth. I gave you a cushion, to bind the bargain."
"That's why I told you about it. You see I'm honest above all things. I get busy and forget, but I'm really trying, Edgar."