“You insolent thing! Leave the room at once, and if you ever dare to speak to my brother again, I’ll publish you from one end of the city to the other, and then we’ll see whether ‘Elsie the cook’ will continue to flaunt her good breeding in the face of her betters.”
The hot blood-surged to Elsie’s face until the purple veins threatened to burst. “Have no fear!” she cried. “I despise——”
At that moment the door opened and Herbert entered the room. He glanced at the flushed faces and turned to his sister for explanation. Elsie, trembling in every limb, rushed through the open door, heedless of Herbert’s earnest entreaty to remain. How she gained the street and flew up the long flights of stairs and buried her head in Margaret’s lap, she never realized until long after. What a tumult of anger, shame, and wounded love raged in the girl’s breast. How black her sky seemed, and how pitiful the story was when, by snatches of incoherent words and bursts of passionate tears, Margaret finally became possessed of it. She could only bend over the writhing form and press kisses upon the disordered hair, while endeavoring to soothe by touch and voice the violent storm of sobs and tears. Calmness had not yet come back to them and reason could only dimly see its way through the darkness, when there came an imperative rap at the door, followed almost instantly by Herbert’s appearance.
“Elsie,” he cried, tossing his hat into a chair and coming up to her as she lay with her head buried in Margaret’s lap, “I have come to make reparation for all that you have suffered this morning. I have learned the whole disgraceful story, and I have come to offer the hand with the heart that has been yours for months. Look up, Elsie, and answer me. Margaret knows that I have loved you long.”
“Oh, go away and leave me,” moaned Elsie. “I cannot bear any more.”
“Come!” exclaimed Herbert, bending over her and attempting to lift her from Margaret’s lap. “I am impatient. I want a decisive answer.”
“You shall have it,” said Elsie, pulling herself away from him and raising a tear-stained and mutinous face to his. “It is a most unqualified No.”
Herbert staggered back a few steps and gazed with evident surprise at Elsie’s resolute face. “You cannot surely mean it,” he cried. “I thought you loved me, or would love me.”
“Over-confidence is sometimes disastrous, even to young men who fancy the world is ‘mine oyster.’”
“Dear child, you are hurt, unstrung by the distressing events of the morning. I wish I could make you see how pained I am that you should have been made to suffer so. I wish you would let me make reparation.”