“Renny, why shouldn’t it be? I can’t be mistaken as to the direction of her feelings—by my soul, I can’t.”
“I’m not so sure,” I said, in a voice of great distress.
He recognized it and stopped questioning me at once.
“You want to be alone, I see,” said he, gently. “Well, I’ll be off.”
As he passed me, he placed his hand for a moment on my shoulder. The action was tender and sympathetic, but I shrunk under it as if it had been a blow.
When the door had closed upon him I rose and sat down at the table. I wrote:
“Dear Dolly: I made a fool of myself to-day and have repented it ever since in sackcloth and ashes. I had so wished to be alone with you, dear, and it made me mad that he should come between us. He isn’t a good companion for you. I must say it, though he is my brother. Had I thought him so I should have brought him to see you before. I only say this to explain my anger at his appearance, and now I will drop the subject for another, which is the real reason of my writing. I had hoped, so much, dear, to put it to you personally, there in the old forest that we have spent so many happy hours in, but I missed my opportunity and now I am in too much of a fever to wait another week. Dolly, will you be my wife? I can afford a home of my own now, and I shall be glad and grateful if you will consent to become mistress of it. I feel that written words can only sound cold at best; so I will say nothing more here, but just this—if you will have me, I will strive in all things to be your loving and devoted husband.
“Renalt Trender.”
All in a glow of confident tenderness, inspired by the words I had written, I added the address and went out and posted my little missive. Its mere composition, the fact of its now lying in the postbox, a link between us, gave me a chastened sense of relief and satisfaction that was restorative to my injured vanity. The mistake of the morning was reacted upon in time, and I felt that nothing short of a disruption of natural affinities could interfere to keep back the inevitable answer. So assured was I, indeed, that I allowed my thoughts to wander as if for a last farewell, into regions wherein the simple heart of my present could find no way to enter. “Good-by, Zyp,” the voiceless soul of me muttered.
That night, looking at Duke’s dark head at rest on the pillow, I thought: “It will be put right to-morrow or the next day, and you, dear friend, need never know what might have followed on my abuse of your trust.” Then I slept peacefully, but my dreams were all of Zyp—not of the other.