"Oh, poor Will Hayter died."

"Dead long?"

"Five or six years."

"Well, I'm not afraid of dead men." Brockton laughed in relief. Mrs.
Dinsmore did not point out to him from her more subtle knowledge that
constancy to the unchanging dead is sometimes easier than constancy to
the variable living. She was only too glad to have the inevitable
disclosure made lightly and the truth dismissed without frightening
off the desirable suitor. "And certainly Miss Harned don't look as if,
as if--"

"Any irremediable grief were gnawing at her damask cheeks?--"

"What's this about damask cheeks?" The question came along with a
swirl of skirts from the great hall. "Cousin Anna, don't hate me for
keeping you so long. Mr. Brockton, I owe you a thousand apologies."

Some of those who admitted Millicent Harned's charm declared that it
lay in her voice. Always there sounded through its music the note of
eagerness, with eagerness's underlying hint of pathos. Her tones were
like her face, her motions, herself. Impulse, merriment, yearning, and
the shadow of melancholy dwelt in her eyes and shaped her lips to
sensitive curves. She was tall, and her motions were of a spontaneous
grace, swifter and more changeful than most women's.

"You have been a disgracefully long time, Millicent," her cousin