That night the ball was to come off; and, as I buttoned my kids, and gave the last adjusting pull to the waist of my “spike,” I resolved that, as soon as I had paid the required courtesies to the lady I was going with, I would seek Lulie, and, whether it offended her or not, give her my last warning against Frank.
It was with difficulty I found her amid the throng that swayed and surged through the ball room. She was in rather a retired corner, receiving very little attention from any one. She had few engagements or none for the dance, and her usually bright face wore an expression of weariness and mental pain as I approached. She welcomed me gladly, and accepted my proposal to stroll in the campus with eagerness. The avenues were lit up, as there was no moon, and strolling down one of these, we turned aside to a rustic seat beneath a large oak. It was a quiet and secluded place; even the music in the ball room sounded soft and indistinct across the maze of shrubbery.
The opportunity was now mine, but I shrank from my duty. She would not appreciate my motives, I was sure, and would repel my counsel with scorn and indignation. Yet could I suffer Frank to betray her into imprudences that would tinge the purity of her character? Could I permit his villainous designs, palpable to all eyes but hers, to go unexposed? Could I see her threatened with evil she would not suspect till it was too late to avert it, and not warn her? No, however thankless my task might prove, for the sake of her dead mother I would tell her of her danger.
“Lulie!” I said, after some moments of silence and reflection on my part.
“What is it, Sir Solemnity?” she replied, looking into my face by the dim light of the distant lamps.
“I wish to speak to you on a very important and delicate subject, and I want you to promise me that you will believe my motives pure and disinterested in so doing. Do not fear that I am going to renew the fishing scene of our childhood; I know too well that my love is hopeless. Let memory sleep; ‘tis of the present now I wish to speak; and I want you to take off your glove and put your hand in mine, and if in what I am going to say you believe there is one single word prompted by aught save the most sacred friendship, instantly withdraw it, and I will say no more.”
She undid the lace-edged kid with a slight tremor in her fingers, and, dropping it heedlessly on the ground, laid her little hand confidingly in mine.
“There is my hand, John,” she said, “but you really frighten me with your solemn preface.”
“Well, then,” I replied, with an effort at a smile, unheeded, perhaps, in the darkness, “to come directly to the point, do you love Frank?”
I felt a quiver in her fingers as she said: