Jane, who had
been straining her ears during the last ten minutes for the mere sound of
his voice, leaned back in her chair with an approximate comfort.
"I don't know, just exactly," replied Marshall, rather dismally. His tone
made him say that he did not know at all. "I've talked with Rosy and I've
talked with Arthur...." He lapsed into a comfortless silence, and ran his
thin old hand over his blanched and furrowed forehead.
"When are they going to be married?" asked Brower. His eyes were on the
bay-window, through whose curtains there showed the face of Bingham, his
own look anxiously fixed on Marshall.
Jane caught indistinctly the muffled tone of these few syllables.
She made them mean a dozen different things and finally nothing at all,
but she was glad of the opportunity to do even that.
"In a month," answered Marshall; "early in October. Rosy lays great
stress on an October wedding--that's the only right sort, it seems." He
sighed with a full sense of the imminence of the inevitable. The voice of
Bingham came with a slow, deep gravity from the bay-window, and Jane's
voice, responding, mingled nervously with her father's sigh.
"Not from the new house?" said Brower.
"Hardly. It will be almost finished, but far from furnished. Perhaps they
will have their receptions there, if they decide to--to come back."
"Come back?" Brower spoke up loudly; a jangling freight train had paused
opposite, and the locomotive was blowing off steam.
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