"I LIKE HER BETTER THAN ANY I HAVE MET--I SHALL MARRY HER."
Kendale was clever and quick of resource. He realized that there must be
sudden action on his part. Should he fly headlong from the place and
give up all? Then a remembrance of the yacht and the horses came to him,
and he set his teeth hard together.
"I will see this game through, come what may," he muttered.
At that instant a daring thought came to him, and he acted upon it
before he could have time to back down through cowardice.
Throwing open the window wide, he stepped boldly out upon the ledge in
full view of the angry crowd of five hundred employees.
"Ladies and gentlemen," he exclaimed, raising his voice to a high key
that all might hear, "I have something to say, and it is only due me
that you should listen and then pass judgment.
"Please believe me, one and all, I had no thought, no wish to offend Mr.
Conway's pretty daughter Margery. I may as well own the truth. I had
fallen desperately in love with the girl and was telling her so, and was
just on the point of asking her to accept me as a suitor for her hand
when she, mistaking my motives, it appears, called for assistance, and I
was not permitted to speak in order to explain.
"Assuring her and all of you that my motives were most honorable, I beg
of you to reconsider leaving me in this abrupt fashion. Return to your
posts of duty, and this little difficulty will be adjusted
satisfactorily to you and to Miss Conway."
Kendale was used to making a hit with an audience--used to throwing his
soul, as it were, into anything he had to say.
The effect on the crowd below was magical; for a moment they were
stunned.
The old cashier was almost stunned. The young millionaire was just about
proposing marriage to Margery! Why, what a mistake he had made--what a
terrible mistake! Even Margery had fallen back a step or two and was
clinging to her father's hand in the greatest amazement.
"I--I think I was mad, friends and fellow-workers," he exclaimed,
huskily. "I believe I was too precipitate in this affair.
"It is so long since I was young I--I had forgotten that it is the
custom of men now, as in the years long since gone by, to speak to a
maiden of love before he said anything of marriage.
"It did not occur to me that the great millionaire wanted my little girl
for his wife, as he now says.
"Hear me, friends, one and all. I most heartily regret causing this
disturbance and I move that we return to our places, as our employer
suggests."
There was a murmur of assent among the throng; then, all in a body, they
moved forward, entering the building again; and in less than five
minutes' time matters were moving on quite as smoothly once more as
though no sudden upheaval had ever occurred in the great dry goods
establishment.
Mr. Conway, however, was too upset to attend further to his duties that
afternoon, and accepted the manager's suggestion that he should go to
his home, Margery accompanying him.
Meanwhile Kendale had thrown himself down into the nearest chair,
breathing hard, feeling like a general who had achieved a most wonderful
victory.
"A few soft, silvery words saved me this time," he muttered, "but it
throws the girl on my hands. Well, I suppose I will have to propose
marriage to her now--every one expects it; there would be a terrible
rumpus kicked up if I did not. Well, let there be an engagement between
us; that doesn't mean that there will be a marriage, by any means. The
engagement can drag along three or four years, and then we can break
off. By that time I shall be ready to marry the heiress of the Fairfax
millions. Ah, how much easier it is to scheme for a fortune than to toil
for one, as most poor mortals do."
The entrance of the manager with the bill for the hundred and
twenty-five thousand put an end to his musings and plans for the
present. Mr. Wright emerged from the office ten minutes later with a
very troubled expression on his face. It was dearly patent to him that
Mr. Lester Armstrong did not care how badly the business was crippled,
so long as he secured the yacht and the fast horses.
From that first day, so full of awkward and almost fatal mistakes,
Kendale spent as little time as was absolutely necessary in the
establishment of Marsh & Company, as it was still called, preferring to
let all of the business cares fall upon the manager's already weighted
shoulders.
In less than a week it was noised about social circles that the young
man who had so suddenly dropped into millions of money was something of
a sport--a yachtsman whose magnificent yachting parties were the wonder
of the metropolis; a horseman whose racing stables were second to none
and were worth a handsome fortune; and it was hinted that he seemed no
stranger at cards and gambled sums of gold that would have purchased a
king's ransom at a single game--until those who looked on in speechless
wonder were sure he must have exhaustless wealth. Every one prophesied,
however, that this reckless extravagance must have an ending some time.
Meanwhile society held out its arms to the young millionaire, welcoming
him with its sweetest smiles.
The date which he had set to dine with the Fairfaxes, of Beechwood,
rolled around at last, and for once in his life Kendale, or rather the
bogus Lester Armstrong, was punctual in his appointment.
He was ushered into a drawing-room of such magnificence that for a
moment he fairly caught his breath in wonder.
"So this was the home of Faynie Fairfax, the girl whom I wedded in the
old church and who died so suddenly on her bridal eve," he soliloquized.
"Well, all this could be mine for the fighting for it as Faynie's
husband, who has survived her, but, as Halloran would say, 'It's a deal
easier getting the same fortune by marrying the stepmother's daughter,
who has come into it by Faynie's father cutting her off at the eleventh
hour.'
"I wonder what the girl Claire is like."
There was a portrait of a young girl done in water colors over the
mantel. He stepped over to examine it.
"If this is Claire's portrait she's certainly not bad looking," he
mused, "but she is one I should not care to cross."
The figure was slight, draped in a gown of some light, airy fabric. The
head was small, crowned in a mass of waving dark hair. The contour of
the face was perfect; a pair of deep gray eyes looked out of it straight
at you; the lips were small, but a little too compressed, showing that
the owner of them had certainly a will of her own, which it was neither
wise nor best to cross.
He was startled from his contemplation by the sound of silken robes
rustling across the carpet, and, wheeling suddenly about, he was
confronted by a tall, slim, magnificent woman, who welcomed him most
graciously to Fairfax House.
"My daughter Claire will join us in a very few minutes. Ah, she is here
now," she announced, as a swift step was heard in the corridor outside;
a moment later the portières parted, and the young girl whose portrait
he had been critically analyzing entered the room.
"I shall know at once by the first words he utters whether I shall like
him or not," thought the girl, looking straight into his face with her
fearless, keen, gray eyes. "He is handsome, and that generally goes with
great conceit, Faynie always said."
"I hope we shall be friends, Miss Fairfax," he said, extending his hand
and bowing low over the little brown one that lay for an instant in his
palm.
"There is a great mistake evident at the outset," said the girl, looking
up into his face. "Mamma said just now: 'This is my daughter Claire.' I
think mamma intended to add, 'Miss Claire Stanhope.' Mr. Fairfax was my
steppapa."
Kendale smiled amusedly, both at the mother's momentary discomfiture
and the young girl's brusque straightforwardness.
"I like her better than any one I have ever met. I shall marry her," he
promised himself.