“My stars! but ain’t he just completely smashed on her! It’s a dead gone case!”
Elsie read the truth of Bart’s continued love in his looks; she realized that it had grown still stronger and deeper. If she had hoped that he would put it away from him she now saw that there was no possibility of his making an effort to do such a thing. And, while it enchanted her, still there was a strange intensity about it that made her afraid.
Still, a man who could love like this was a man who would make a most devoted husband. He would be ready to shield from all harm the prize he had won. He would devote the remainder of his life to her without reservation and without selfishness, no matter what his past record showed him to be.
At least, thoughts like these flitted vaguely through the mind of the girl who had met him there upon the veranda of that beautiful Virginian home.
“Yes, I’m awfully glad you’ve come!” declared Elsie, smiling even though it seemed that he would crush her slender fingers in his fierce, thoughtless grasp. “But where is—Frank?”
He dropped her hands suddenly.
“Frank?” he said, and there was a strange hoarseness in his voice. “You are disappointed because he did not come instead of me!”
“Crickets!” thought His Royal Highness, still maintaining his position with his back toward them, although he would have given the wealth of half his kingdom to peep at them then. “That feller is jealous! My! my! but he’s a hot one!”
“Oh, no!” Elsie quickly declared, putting both her hands on Bart’s arms and looking again into his eyes; “not that. I am disappointed because he did not come with you.”
“Wonder which one she’s worse smashed on,” speculated the king to himself. “Frank? Why, she must mean Frank Merriwell! Jeroosalam! If that’s the case, this feller don’t stand a ghost of a show! Why, of course she cares most for Frank!”