She moved uncertainly toward the door and, glancing through the window, saw her sister drive past the front gate. “There’s Rhoda!” she exclaimed, casting back at him a fiery glance. “I shall tell her just the sort of man you are!” But she did not forget to give her hoopskirt an extra tilt as she dashed out. Delavan, noting it, smiled as he followed her to the door and cast a glance after her figure, hurriedly retreating up the stairs.
Rhoda did not know that Jeff was there until she came into the hall through the office and saw him standing in the parlor door. “Sweetheart!” he called in low tones, and moved toward her, with outstretched hand. A glad light came into her face at sight of him, but she stood still and did not speak, until he was at her side.
“Don’t, Jeff! When I have told you so many times it can’t be!” she pleaded, and drew away from him as he would take her in his arms.
“I know, dearest! But it’s different now, when I know what you really want!”
She turned so that he could not see her face and asked with a sort of gasp, “What do you mean?”
If he could have seen her countenance as she stood with face averted, finger on lip, listening breathlessly for his reply, nothing would have prevented him from seizing her in his arms and doing as she had begged in the letter she had not meant him to see. For it glowed with love and trembled upon surrender and shone with gladness that he knew her inmost heart.
“Ah, Rhoda Ware, I know your secret now!” He was bending near her, his hands hovering over her, but still he would not touch her while she seemed unwilling. “I know, now, how much you love me, and how ready at last you are to give up to your heart. Come then, dear one, or I shall surely do as you bade me in your letter!”
A sudden stiffening and shrinking in her attitude made him fall back a step and look at her anxiously. Slowly, very slowly, she turned, lifting her head, until she faced him. And slowly the love-light and the trembling nearness to surrender faded out of her countenance and left it drawn with the effort by which she had forced herself once more to the point of denial, with lips compressed and gray eyes steely with resolution.
“Jeff,” she began, and her voice was unsteady, “it’s not fair to either of us that you saw what I wrote. I didn’t mean to put that into my letter—I wrote it out only because my heart ached so and it seemed some relief. But I thought I’d burned it. I’m sorry it got mixed in with the other sheets. But it was a mistake, and you’ll forgive me, won’t you, dear Jeff, and you won’t feel that it was a promise?”
Her voice fell away into pleading tones and she stood hesitating, poised, as if wishing him to stand aside and let her pass. With instinctive deference he stepped aside and she moved quickly to the foot of the stairs. But he sprang after her and seized her hand, exclaiming, as he drew her into the parlor, “No, Rhoda! I shall not let you ruin both our lives and break both our hearts, after that glimpse you gave me of yours!”