"No, I must confess I wouldn't. She is very gentle but she generally knows her own mind pretty thoroughly. Jeffreys, my dear fellow, I am sorry. I don't wonder you are cut up and are thinking of leaving us. It would be a desperately hard fight to stay and be obliged to see her every now and then. For a man to lose a girl like Linda Talbot is pretty tough lines. I shouldn't want my worst enemy to go through such a purgatory."
"You speak feelingly," returned Mr. Jeffreys with a little bitter smile. Then his better manhood asserting itself, "Matthews, you know you love her yourself."
Berkley tossed up his head proudly. "What if I do? I am not ashamed of it."
"And you deliberately gave me the chance of winning her if I could. Why?"
Berkley made savage dabs with his pen upon the blotting pad before him, thereby injuring the pen hopelessly and doing the blotter no good. He suddenly threw the pen aside. "What sort of chump would I be if I hadn't done it? Her happiness was the first thing to be considered, not mine. I knew she wanted Talbot's Angles more than anything in the world, and that ought to have made it dead easy for a man who really loved a girl in the right way."
"And you have been doing everything in your power to win the property for me. You have been loyal to both of us. Shake hands, Berkley Matthews, you are far and away a better man than I am, but I will not be outdone. Do you think I have no pride? I may have a deliberate conscience, as Miss Talbot herself once told me, but I hope it is as well developed as yours. I'll fight it out and then we shall see. What right had I to expect that I could throw a sop to my conscience by asking her to marry me? I see it all now. You love her; so do I, and I will prove it to you both."
"Do you suppose I doubted the truth of your feeling for her?" cried Berkley. "That would be a poor compliment to her. I think you are too easily downed, Jeffreys. Cheer up. Take another chance. Wait awhile. Do your best to better your chances. Unbend a little. Be more free and easy. Make her dependent upon you for encouragement and sympathy. Oh, there are a thousand ways."
Jeffreys regarded him with a half smile. "You mean I must substitute a Southern temperament for a Northern one. That is easier said than done. The day of miracles is past."
"You've not known her so very long," Berkley persisted in his argument.