A young man with a determined set to his shoulders stood outside the
door of a little cottage perched upon a bluff overlooking the Sound. The
chill sea air was sweet with the scent of roses, and he drew in a deep
breath of inspiration before he knocked.
“Are you not surprised to see me?” he inquired of the young person who
opened the door.
“Not at all,” replied the young person demurely.
He gave her a quick almost fierce look. At their last parting he had
declared that he would not come again unless she requested him, and that
she assuredly had not done.
“I wish I could make you feel,” said he.
She laughed—a pretty infectious laugh which exorcised all his gloom. He
looked down upon her as they stood together under the cluster of
electric lights in her cozy little sitting-room. Such a slender, girlish
figure! Such a soft cheek, red mouth, and firm little chin! Often in his
dreams of her he had taken her into his arms and coaxed her into a good
humor. But, alas! dreams are not realities, and the calm friendliness of
this young person made any demonstration of tenderness well-nigh
impossible. But for the shy regard of her eyes, you might have thought
that he was no more to her than a friendly acquaintance.
“I hear,” said she, taking up some needlework, “that your Welland case
comes on tomorrow.”
“Yes,” answered the young lawyer, “and I have all my witnesses ready.”
“So, I hear, has Mr. Greaves,” she retorted. “You are going to have a
hard fight.”
“What of that, when in the end I’ll win.”
He looked over at her with a bright gleam in his eyes.
“I wouldn’t be too sure,” she warned demurely. “You may lose on a
technicality.”
He drew his chair a little nearer to her side and turned over the pages
of a book lying on her work-table. On the fly-leaf was inscribed in a
man’s writing: “To the dear little woman whose friendship is worth a
fortune.”
Another book beside it bore the inscription: “With the love of all the
firm, including the boys,” and a volume of poems above it was dedicated
to the young person “with the high regards and stanch affection” of some
other masculine person.
Will Carman pushed aside these evidences of his sweetheart’s popularity
with his own kind and leaned across the table.
“Alice,” said he, “once upon a time you admitted that you loved me.”
A blush suffused the young person’s countenance.
“Did I?” she queried.
“You did, indeed.”
“Well?”
“Well! If you love me and I love you—”
“Oh, please!” protested the girl, covering her ears with her hands.
“I _will_ please,” asserted the young man. “I have come here tonight,
Alice, to ask you to marry me—and at once.”
“Deary me!” exclaimed the young person; but she let her needlework fall
into her lap as her lover, approaching nearer, laid his arm around her
shoulders and, bending his face close to hers, pleaded his most
important case.
If for a moment the small mouth quivered, the firm little chin lost its
firmness, and the proud little head yielded to the pressure of a lover’s
arm, it was only for a moment so brief and fleeting that Will Carman had
hardly become aware of it before it had passed.
“No,” said the young person sorrowfully but decidedly. She had arisen
and was standing on the other side of the table facing him. “I cannot
marry you while your mother regards me as beneath you.”
“When she, knows you she will acknowledge you are above me. But I am not
asking you to come to my mother, I am asking you to come to me, dear. If
you will put your hand in mine and trust to me through all the coming
years, no man or woman born can come between us.”
But the young person shook her head.
“No,” she repeated. “I will not be your wife unless your mother welcomes
me with pride and with pleasure.”
The night air was still sweet with the perfume of roses as Will Carman
passed out of the little cottage door; but he drew in no deep breath of
inspiration. His impetuous Irish heart was too heavy with
disappointment. It might have been a little lighter, however, had he
known that the eyes of the young person who gazed after him were misty
with a love and yearning beyond expression.