She saw him every day; she dined at the club table now.
Miss Garcide's hay-fever increased with the ripening summer, and she lay in her room with all the windows closed, sneezing and reading Anthony Trollope.
When Miss Castle told her that Mr. Crawford was a guest at the club, Miss Garcide wept over her for an hour.
"I feel like weeping, too," said Miss Castle, tremulously--"but not over myself."
"Yes, over him. He ought to marry a girl who could fall in love with him."
Meanwhile Crawford was dining every evening with her at the great club table, telling her of the day's sport, and how a black bear had come splashing across the shallows within a few rods of where he stood fishing, and how the deer had increased, and were even nibbling the succulent green stalks in the kitchen garden after nightfall.
During the day she found herself looking forward to his return and his jolly, spirited stories, always gay and humorous, and never tiresome, technical, nor conceited, although for three years he had held the club cup for the best fish taken on Sagamore water.
She took sun-baths in her hammock; she read novels; she spent hours in reverie, blue eyes skyward, arms under her head, swayed in her hammock by the delicious winds of a perfect June.
All her composure and common-sense had returned. She began to experience a certain feeling of responsibility for Crawford--a feeling almost maternal.
"He's so amusingly shy about speaking," she told Miss Garcide; "I suppose he's anxious and bashful. I think I'll tell him that it is all arranged. Besides, I promised Mr. Garcide to speak. I don't see why I don't; _I'm not a bit embarrassed_."
But the days went shining by, and a new week dawned, and Miss Castle had not taken pity upon her tongue-tied lover.
"Oh, this is simply dreadful," she argued with herself. "Besides, I want to know how soon the man expects to marry me. I've a few things to purchase, thank you, and if he thinks a trousseau is thrown together in a day, he's a--a man!"
That evening she determined to fulfil her promise to Garcide as scrupulously as she kept all her promises.
She wore white at dinner, with a great bunch of wild iris that Crawford had brought her. Towards the end of the dinner she began to be frightened, but it was the instinct of the Castles to fight fear and overcome it.