really thinking how charming a girl Helen Cresswell was. She fascinated
him. For his sister Taylor had a feeling of superiority that was almost
contempt. The idea of a woman trying to understand and argue about
things men knew! He admired the dashing and handsome Miss Easterly, but
she scared him and made him angrily awkward. This girl, on the other
hand, just lounged and listened with an amused smile, or asked the most
child-like questions. She required him to wait on her quite as a matter
of course--to adjust her pillows, hand her the bon-bons, and hunt for
her lost fan. Mr. Taylor, who had not waited on anybody since his mother
died, and not much before, found a quite inexplicable pleasure in these
little domesticities. Several times he took out his watch and frowned;
yet he managed to stay with her quite happily.

On her part Miss Cresswell was vastly amused. Her acquaintance with men
was not wide, but it was thorough so far as her own class was concerned.
They were all well-dressed and leisurely, fairly good looking, and they
said the same words and did the same things in the same way. They paid
her compliments which she did not believe, and they did not expect her
to believe. They were charmingly deferential in the matter of dropped
handkerchiefs, but tyrannical of opinion. They were thoughtful about
candy and flowers, but thoughtless about feelings and income. Altogether
they were delightful, but cloying. This man was startlingly different;
ungainly and always in a desperate, unaccountable hurry. He knew no
pretty speeches, he certainly did not measure up to her standard of
breeding, and yet somehow he was a gentleman. All this was new to Helen
Cresswell, and she liked it.

Meanwhile the men above-stairs lingered in the Colonel's office--the
older one perturbed and sputtering, the younger insistent and
imperturbable.