The girl looked up at him radiantly, and there was an amused expression in her lovely eyes that he could not understand.
“I shall be glad to go, Frederick,” she said. “I’ll be ready early. Good-night.”
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
CLEARING UP MYSTERIES
While Josephine Bayley prepared her breakfast the next morning, every now and then she paused to laugh gleefully. Was she doing wrong to deceive the fine man who loved her so dearly? And yet, after all, she had not deceived him. He had never once asked her who her father had been. He had merely jumped to the conclusion that she was poor because she was teaching school in Woodford’s Cañon. After all, that was a natural inference.
He had completely forgotten, or so it seemed, that on the first day of their acquaintance Josephine had mentioned that she had known Marlita Arden. The truth was that Frederick had not forgotten. He had, however, satisfied his own curiosity as to the manner in which the two girls had met. Marlita had a younger sister, Gladys Louise, and, as he thought of her, he recalled that she had a governess named Josephine. He had never seen her, but since his Josephine knew Marlita intimately, she probably had lived in their home as governess to the younger Arden girl.
As the young engineer walked toward the cabin beyond the inn at nine that morning, with each stride his decision grew stronger. His aunt, he knew, would scorn any girl who earned her own living, but she would be especially rude, he was convinced, to a young woman who had been governess in the home of one of her friends.
After all, perhaps it would be kinder not to take Josephine Bayley with him when he went to see his aunt at the inn. He could announce his intention to marry whom he would, and let the matter rest there, but, to his surprise, when he told the girl he loved that he wished to spare her possible humiliation, she looked so truly disappointed that he exclaimed: “Why, Josephine, you don’t want to go, do you? I thought you were merely accompanying me because I had requested it.”
She smiled at him, and in her expression there was no trace of timidity. “I’m not the least bit afraid of dragoness aunts,” she assured him. Then she added, “If you’ll be seated a moment, I’ll don my best spring hat and coat.”
Five minutes later the girl emerged from her porch room, and the young man leaped to his feet, gazing as though at a vision.
“How beautiful you are in that silvery gray,” he said.