The vehemence of his tone really startled Julie who laughed to herself afterward as she remembered how she had shrank back in her corner as if she expected him to snatch her up bodily.
“Leave Hester,” she cried aghast, “and Daddy and Bridget—and Peter Snooks and—and every-body to go away with you? Monsieur Grémond, you must be mad.”
“Then you do not know what love is.” He rose and came over to her. “Will you put your hands in mine, Mademoiselle? I am going—good-by. I suppose I have been a selfish brute to dwell altogether on my own troubles and not sympathize with yours, but the truth is I am knocked out. I undoubtedly, as you say, took too much for granted.”
“Do not put us out of your life altogether,” said Julie gently. “Some day perhaps you will really care for my interest and respect and all the things I would gladly give you if you would have them.”
“If you put it that way, perhaps—but it seems to me there is only one thing,” he said disconsolately.
“Then you are not half the man I take you to be!”
“I will be,” asserted Grémond, his better nature responding to this rebuke. “It is good at least to have been with you. Good-by, Mademoiselle, good-by.”
For some time after he had gone Julie sat with closed lids trying to forget the last look of his eyes into hers, so persistently did it haunt her; but within her heart surged a feeling of gratitude that there is an all-wise Providence who shapes our ends.
CHAPTER XVII
Madame Grundy was saying that winter that at last Kenneth Landor had settled down, though why he should take the trouble to burden himself with business cares when he had a rich, indulgent father was, from her point of view, wholly incomprehensible. Other people who knew Kenneth better saw that his life had become full of purpose and regarded it as the natural outcome of a nature like his—rich in possibilities. To the father who was just learning to know the son, there was much that was surprising in the intelligent way in which he grasped the great commission business and little by little made himself familiar with every detail, showing that in his composition was much practical ability—talents unquestionably inherited. Of any ulterior motive which had led him on to these things Mr. Landor had no suspicion nor indeed had any one save Dr. Ware, who kept his own counsel, and possibly Jack, whose fanciful imagination wove endless romances, the thread of which became wretchedly entangled, for what could a poor boy do with two heroines to one hero?