But none of Peggy's outspoken warnings nor any of St. George's silent acceptances of the several situations--always a mark of his disapproval--checked the game of love-making which was going on--the give-and-take stage of it, with the odds varying with each new shifting of the cards, both Peggy and St. George growing the more nervous.
“She's going to accept him, St. George,” Peggy had said to him one morning as he stood behind her chair while she was shelling the peas for dinner. “I didn't think so when he first came, but I believe it now. I have said all I could to her. She has cuddled up in my arms and cried herself sick over it, but she won't hold out much longer. Young Rutter left her heart all torn and bleeding and this man has bound up the sore places. She will never love anybody that way again--and may be it is just as well. He'd have kept her guessing all her life as to what he'd do next. I wish Willits's blood was better, for she's a dear, sweet child and proud as she can be, only she's proud over different things from what I would be. But you can make up your mind to it--she'll keep him dangling for a while yet, as she did last summer at the Red Sulphur, but she'll be his wife in a year or less--you mark my words. You haven't yet heard from the first one, have you?--as to when he's coming home?”
St. George hadn't heard--he sighed in return--a habit of his lately: No, not for two months or more--not since the letter in which Harry said he had left the ship and had gone up into the interior. He had, he told her, mentioned the boy's silence to Kate in a casual way, watching the effect the news produced upon her--but after the remark that the mails were always irregular from those far-away countries, she had turned the conversation into other channels, she having caught sight of Willits, who had just dismounted from his horse.
As to St. George's own position in the affair he felt that his hands were still so firmly tied that he could do nothing one way or the other. His personal intercourse with Willits had been such as he would always have with a man with whom he was on speaking terms, but it never passed that border. He was courteous, careful of his speech, and mindful of the young man's devotion to Kate, whose guardian for the time being he was, but he neither encouraged nor thwarted his suit. Kate was of age and was fully competent to decide for herself--extremely competent, for that matter.