"What do you mean?"
"I mean never to speak to you again after this brief interview. I am a lost man—lost beyond hope, and you are the cause. If you had had a mother's heart my father would not have been so obdurate. Since you would not let me marry her, I was tempted by my love and the horrible life I lead in this house to offer her a relation which would have been marriage to me, but from which her proud, pure spirit, recoiled, as I recoil from you, and I shall never see her face again in this world or in any world. Your work is finished. You need not scheme or threaten any more. While she is as good as an angel of heaven, she is as proud as you are, and you have murdered my hope—my soul. Father, I have but one request to make to you. Give me money enough to live anywhere except under this roof. No, no more words to-night, unless you would have me die in your presence with curses on my lips. I have reached the utmost limit;" and he abruptly left the room.
Mrs. Arnold took refuge in hysterics, and her husband rang violently for her maid, and then locked himself up in his library, where he walked the floor for many an hour. The next morning he tried to make overtures to his son, but he found the young man deaf and stony in his despair. "It's too late," was all that he would say.
"Oh, let him alone," protested his wife irritably, as her husband came down looking sorely troubled; "Vinton will indulge in high tragedy for a few months, and then settle down to sensible life," and in the hope of this solution the old merchant went gloomily to his business.
That day Vinton Arnold left his home, and it was years before he returned.
Two years or more passed away in quiet, toilsome days for Mildred. She had gained serenity, and apparently had accepted her lot without repining. Indeed, thanks to Roger's unfaltering devotion, it was not a monotonous or a sad one. He let her heart rest, hoping, trusting that some day it would wake from its sleep. In compliance with her wish he was in semblance a brother, and his attentions were so quiet and frank, his manner toward her so restful, that even she half believed at times that his regard for her was passing into the quiet and equable glow of fraternal love. Such coveted illusions could not be long maintained, however, for occasionally when he was off his guard she would find him looking at her in a way that revealed how much he repressed. She shed many bitter tears over what she termed his "obstinate love," but an almost morbid conviction had gained possession of her mind that unless she could return his affection in kind and degree she ought not to marry him.
At last she began to grow a little restless under her rather aimless life, and one day she said to her pastor, Mr. Wentworth, "I want a career—isn't that what you call it? I'm tired of being a sewing-woman, and soon I shall be a wrinkled spinster. Isn't there something retired and quiet which a girl with no more brains and knowledge than I have can do?"
"Yes," he said gravely; "make a home for Roger."
She shook her head. "That is the only thing I can't do for him," she replied very sadly. "God only knows how truly I love him. I could give him my life, but not the heart of a wife. I have lost everything except truth to my womanly nature. I must keep that. Moreover, I'm too good a friend of Roger's to marry him. He deserves the strong first love of a noble woman, and it will come to him some day. Do you think I could stand before you and God's altar and promise what is impossible? No, Mr. Wentworth, Roger has a strength and force of character which will carry him past all this, and when once he sees I have found a calling to which I can devote all my energies, he will gradually become reconciled to the truth, and finally accept a richer happiness than I could ever bring him."
"You are an odd girl, Mildred, but perhaps you are right. I've learned to have great faith in you. Well, I know of a career which possibly may suit you. It would open an almost limitless field of usefulness," and he told her of the Training School for Nurses in connection with Bellevue Hospital.