"I cannot imagine," she said, "how you can take the part of a man who would deliberately attempt to lower himself in the eyes of one woman in order that he might have a better chance to win another woman."
"Mrs. Cristie," said Lodloe, "I am a young man, and I have lived much among young men. I have seen many of them in dangerous and troubled waters, floating down to ruin and destruction, and now and then I have seen one who had turned and was trying to strike out for the shore. In every case of this kind I have tried to give the poor fellow a hand and help him get his feet on firm ground. Sometimes he jumped in again, and sometimes he didn't, but all that was not my affair; I was bound to help him when I saw him facing the right way, and that is just the way I feel about young Beam. I do not approve of all his methods, but if he wants moral support I say he ought to have it."
Mrs. Cristie looked at the pink, blue, and purple blossoms on the ground. "His sentiments are good and generous ones," she thought, "and I shall not say one word against them, but Ida Mayberry shall not marry that exceedingly slippery young man, and the good Mr. Tippengray shall not be caught by Calthea Rose." She came to this resolution with much firmness of purpose, but as she was not prepared to say anything on the subject just then, she looked up very sweetly at Lodloe, and said:
"Suppose we drop Mr. Beam."
He looked for an instant into her eyes.
"Gladly," he exclaimed, with an impulse like a lightning-flash, "and speak of Walter Lodloe."
"Of you?" she said.
"Yes, of me," he replied; "of myself, of a man who has no scheme, no plan, no concealments, and who only wishes you to know that he loves you with all his heart."
She looked at him steadfastly for a moment.
"Was it for this," she said, "that you asked me to come with you and pick sweet-pea blossoms?"