“Sorry? Why should I be sorry?”
“You might have had an old and honorable title, you know,” he reminded her. “Cumberleigh could have given you that much, at least.”
She glanced up with a bewitching little twist of the lips which carried him swiftly back to childhood days, and to his memories of her childhood.
“I have a title,” she retorted; “the most honorable title in all the world. When I die it shall be graven on my tombstone.”
“Epitaphs—already?” he deprecated, with his sober smile. Then, in a sudden rush of poignant tenderness: “Oh, my dear one—let us hope that the day is far distant!”
“Amen!” she said softly; “because I don’t want to leave you, David. But when the day does come I shall have my title: I thought of it this afternoon when we were at McCulloch’s camp, and I stood aside and heard you say, ‘No, Mac—do the job just as if you were doing it for yourself.’ Then I saw just how my epitaph-title was going to read: ‘Here lies Virginia Vallory, the wife of an honest man.’ There now; if that crowd wasn’t looking on with all its eyes, I’m sure you’d kiss me for that. Let’s go in to dinner; I’m actually unromantic enough to be fiercely hungry. Good-by, blessed sunset,” and she blew a kiss to the crimson west.
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:
Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.
Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.
Archaic or alternate spelling has been retained from the original.