"To Rome. I have a friend who is at present living there, and I am going to join her."
"But why?"
The point-blank question was so much in character with the speaker that Marion smiled.
"Why?" she repeated. "Well, I have nothing to keep me in this country, I am fond of my friend, and I wish to see the world—are not those reasons enough?"
"Perhaps so," he answered. He was silent for a moment, staring at her with his large, dark, brilliant eyes in a manner which tried even her self-possession. Then he asked, abruptly: "When are you going?"
"As soon as I can arrange my affairs. That sounds like a jest, but it is not: I really have some affairs to arrange. They will not occupy me very long, however. I shall probably leave in a week or ten days."
"Oh—I thought you might be going to-morrow!" said Mr. Singleton, with an air of relief.
After that he was a daily visitor,—such an open, persistent, long-staying visitor, that all Scarborough was soon on tiptoe of expectation. What did it mean? What would be the end of this sensational affair? Would the legitimate heir of the fortune marry the girl who had given it up without a contest? People began to say that Miss Lynde had been shrewd, and had known very well all the time what she was about.
Miss Lynde, on her part, felt as if she would never reach the end of the difficulties which seemed to evolve out of one another, according to a process of evolution with which we are all familiar. Had her passionate desire for wealth created a sort of moral Frankenstein, which would continue to pursue her? When, after a struggle known only to herself, she had decided to resign the fortune, she had thought that she cast away all perplexities arising out of it; but now it appeared that she had resigned only the money, and that the difficulties and perplexities remained. For, as clearly as any one else, she perceived—what indeed George Singleton made no effort to conceal—the object of his constant and assiduous attentions. The fortune she had given up was to be offered her again: she would again be forced to make a difficult choice.
For all that has been written of Marion Lynde has been written to little purpose if any one imagines that wealth had lost its glamour in her eyes, or that her old ambitions were dead within her. They had been for a time subdued,—for a time she had realized that one might be crushed by the weight of a granted prayer; but the old desires and the old attraction still remained strong enough to prove a potent force in the hour of temptation.