“Yes, I am Tom Cooper, and you are——”
“Jim Farren. Don’t bother to wake Biddy to-night, but tell her her cousin called to see her, a cousin on our mother’s side.”
With this he gave a horrid laugh and sped out of the door, and Tom sank down upon a seat, and his heart felt in his bosom like a lump of lead.
“Who is that man?” asked Nellie pointedly.
“He is the man who threw you from the boat, and, Nellie, if he should come to-morrow while I am away and they ask you to go with them, would you go? I knew he recognized you, for he looked hard at the locket on your neck. He tried to steal it from you that night in the river.”
Helen Standish showed her force of character as she took Tom’s large head in her hands and kissed him.
“I would no more think of leaving you, Tom, than I would to leave Biddy, nor half as quick, for you are going to be my husband, are you not?”
“Oh, Nellie, those words make me so happy, but what if they should offer you a great fortune?”
“Without you, my darling, I would not take it, for I want only this little family circle. Don’t worry about that, you cannot get rid of your sweetheart so easy.”
“God forbid that anything like that should ever happen.”