"A duty which I shall soon have to perform, also," Merwyn said.
She looked at him inquiringly. Had he at last found his manhood, and did he intend to assert it? Had he abandoned his calculating policy, and was he cherishing some loyal purpose? If this were true and she had any part in his decision, it would be a triumph indeed; and, while she felt that she could never respond to any such proposition as he had made through her mother, she could forget the past and give him her hand in friendly encouragement towards such a career as Lane and Strahan had chosen. She felt that it would be well not to be over-hasty in showing resentment, but if possible to let him reveal his plans and character fully. She listened quietly, therefore, without show of approval or disapproval, as he began in reply to her questioning glance.
"I am going to be frank with you this evening, Miss Vosburgh. The time has come when I should be so. Has not Mrs. Vosburgh told you something of the nature of my interview with her?"
The young girl merely bowed.
"Then you know how sincere and earnest I am in what—in what I shall have to say."
To his surprise he felt a nervous trepidation that he would not have imagined possible in making his magnanimous offer. He found this humble American girl more difficult to approach than any other woman he had ever met.
"Miss Vosburgh," he continued, hesitatingly, "when I first entered this room I did not understand your true worth and superiority, but a sense of these has been growing on me from that hour to this. Perhaps I was not as sincere as I—I—should have been, and you were too clever not to know it. Will you listen to me patiently?"
Again she bowed, and lower this time to conceal a slight smile of triumph.
Encouraged, he proceeded: "Now that I have learned to know you well, I wish you to know me better,—to know all about me. My father was a Northern man with strong Northern traits; my mother, a Southern woman with equally strong Southern traits. I have been educated chiefly abroad. Is it strange, then, that I cannot feel exactly as you do, or as some of your friends do?"
"As we once agreed, Mr. Merwyn, each must choose his own course for life."