The Strength of Love

Summary of The Strength of Love

When Dallas Bain and Royall Sherwood, with the dashing young widow, Mrs. Fleming, drove down the village street in their fine landau that summer afternoon, Daisie Bell stood on the steps of her aunt’s cottage, plucking the purple wistaria blooms from the vines above her head, and the picture she made in her youth and grace stayed in both the men’s hearts till they died.

Just a slip of a girl—perhaps seventeen or eighteen—gowned very simply, in white, with lavender ribbons at throat and waist; but her figure was grace and symmetry itself; and her face—well, men have died for faces less fair than hers, with its dusk-violet eyes, blue in the light, black in the shade, under the fringed curtain of jetty lashes that contrasted so vividly with the living gold of her hair as it swept in loose waves over her shoulders.

Both the young men gazed at this charming vision in frank delight, and as the unknown beauty and the gay little widow exchanged formal bows, exclaimed simultaneously: “Who is that beautiful girl?” Mrs. Fleming frowned jealously, bit her red lips, and answered, with some asperity: “What geese men are! Always caught by theatricals! Couldn’t you both see that the bold thing was just posing for your benefit?”

“How exceedingly kind of her, to be sure! We certainly enjoyed the tableau very much,” lisped Royall Sherwood, a rich young man of the genus dude, who was Mrs. Fleming’s cousin, and visiting her at her summer home in Maryland, having brought with him Dallas Bain, a new friend he had made on the return trip from Europe, a month ago.

“I don’t know a thing about him, except that he’s clever and handsome, and seems to have plenty of money; but I like him immensely, so I brought him here with me, and if you’re not pleased you can just ship us both when you get tired,” Royall said coolly to his cousin, who answered gayly: “I’ll never get tired, I assure you; the dear boy is too charming.” That was ten days ago, and as time went by she found him more charming than ever, though there was about him a careless insouciance, a cynical indifference to her wiles, that piqued her into deeper earnestness, so that by the end of the first week she was passionately in love, and using every feminine art to bring him to her feet.

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