“I say it, Jeanie, dear, because, in spite of everything he has been and has done, Philip loves you, even as you love him,” he said. “But he believes he has sinned beyond your forgiveness. If you can forgive him——”
She looked up to see why he had let the sentence lapse, and when the distracting reason became apparent, she laid her work aside and slipped away to the bed-room she shared with Mysie. When she came back she was holding one hand behind her. Suddenly the play-boy found himself staring at a reflection of his own face in a little hand-mirror. He glanced up at her with the boyish smile that endeared him to all women.
“You are a little wretch, Jean!” he laughed. “You caught me red-handed, didn’t you?—just as you said you would that day when we were out in the Highlands. All right; it’s a fact, and I plead guilty. But I’ll be good and patient and wait until you won’t have to say that I’m robbing the cradle. Now that you know what I was dreaming about, may I go and see if I can’t give Mysie a bit of help? She seems to be finding her trigonometry harder than usual to-night, judging from the way she is making faces at it.”
Bromley’s prediction that Philip would return to Colorado came true within a fortnight, and the news of his arrival reached the play-boy through Reddick. Going at once to the rooms in the Alamo Building, Bromley found the returned traveller opening his mail.
“You made a quick trip, Phil,” was his greeting. “How did you find things in the old home?”
Philip laid the envelope opener aside and felt for his pipe.
“I found them pretty much as I expected to. And there was nothing to stay for, after my errand was done.”
“No trouble about the errand, was there?”
“No. The bank people didn’t ask any questions. They were only too glad to see the color of their money again.”