Dexter had seen Heathcote too, and he had also seen her sudden nervousness. He was intensely vexed. Could Ward Heathcote, simply by looking through a window, make a girl grow nervous in that way, and a girl with whom he, Dexter, was dancing? With inward angry determination, he immediately asked her to dance again. But he need not have feared interference; Heathcote did not enter the room during the evening.
From the moment Miss Vanhorn heard the story of that day her method regarding her niece changed entirely; for Mr. Heathcote would never have remained with her, storm or no storm, through four or five hours, unless he either admired her, had been entertained by her, or liked her for herself alone, as men will like occasionally a frank, natural young girl.
According to old Katharine, Anne was not beautiful enough to excite his admiration, not amusing enough to entertain him; it must be, therefore, that he liked her to a certain degree for herself alone. Mr. Heathcote was not a favorite of old Katharine's, yet none the less was his approval worth having, and none the less, also, was he an excellent subject to rouse the jealousy of Gregory Dexter. For Dexter was not coming forward as rapidly as old Katharine had decreed he should come. Old Katharine had decided that Anne was to marry Dexter; but if in the mean time her girlish fancy was attracted toward Heathcote, so much the better. It would all the more surely eliminate the memory of that fatal name, Pronando. Of course Heathcote was only amusing himself, but he must now be encouraged to continue to amuse himself. She ceased taking Anne to the woods every day; she made her sit among the groups of ladies on the piazza in the morning, with worsted, canvas, and a pattern, which puzzled poor Anne deeply, since she had not the gift of fancy-work, nor a talent for tidies. She asked Heathcote to teach her niece to play billiards, and she sent her to stroll on the river-bank at sunset with him under a white silk parasol. At the same time, however, she continued to summon Mr. Dexter to her side with the same dictatorial manner she had assumed toward him from the first, and to talk to him, and encourage him to talk to her through long half-hours of afternoon and evening. The old woman, with her airs of patronage, her half-closed eyes, and frank impertinence, amused him more than any one at Caryl's. With his own wide, far-reaching plans and cares and enterprises all the time pushing each other forward in his mind, it was like coming from a world of giants to one of Lilliputians to sit down and talk with limited, prejudiced, narrow old Katharine. She knew that he was amused; she was even capable of understanding it, viewed from his own stand-point. That made no difference with her own.