"And now," he continued hesitatingly, as if approaching a delicate subject, "I think I know the cause of your trouble and depression. Will you permit me to speak of it?"
Again she averted her face in confusion, but said faintly: "As my spiritual physician I suppose you must."
"I think you naturally felt greatly disappointed that Mr. De
Forrest acted the part he did last evening."
This speech put Lottie at ease at once, and she turned to him in apparent frankness, but with something of her old insincerity, and said, "I confess that I was."
"You could not be otherwise," he said, in a low tone.
"What would you advise me to do?" she asked demurely.
It was now his turn to be embarrassed, and he found that he had got himself into a dilemma. The color deepened in his face as he hesitated how to answer. She watched him furtively but searchingly. At last he said, with sudden impetuosity, as if he could not restrain himself: "I would either make a man of him or break with him forever. It's horrible that a girl like you should be irrevocably bound to such—pardon me."
Again Lottie averted her face, while a dozen rainbows danced in her moist eyes.
But she managed to say, "Which do you think I had better do?"
He tried to catch her eye, but she would not permit him. After a moment he sprang up and said, with something of her own brusqueness, "You had better follow your own heart."