He strode up and down the room and stopped before me, and something out of the depths of his heart shone in his countenance and lifted him to greatness, it seemed to me, so that he saw his way clearly.
“I shall do my work,” he said, solemnly. “I will do what my God tells me to do. I will try to be good enough for her—that is something—and I shall marry Miss Manning.”
“Do you think you ought to do that?” I asked. “I have promised, and a gentleman keeps his word unless—unless there's some good reason why he shouldn't.”
“I have sometimes thought that she was not the woman for you,” I suggested.
“So have I. Poor girl! We're quick to judge, and not any of us are perfect. My life isn't much; I'm glad to give it for a principle.”
“I know how you feel,” I said, thinking of my own troubles. “But then it may be that she doesn't care for you.”
“Well, I've got to believe her, haven't I?”
“Yes—if—if she's a lady,” was my answer. “Well, you see, I'm a pretty common fellow myself, and I must treat other people as I would have them treat me. Miss Manning is a good-hearted girl; she's had bad luck—the company stranded, and all that. In the morning I wish you to go to New York and find her. She lives at the Waverly Place Hotel. I'll give you a check signed in blank. Get a schedule of her debts, if possible; satisfy yourself as to the sum she really needs if it takes a week, and make the check for any amount you think best. When you're ready, wire me, and I'll meet you and we'll go on to Pittsburg. One moment,” he added, as I was leaving him, “you will be apt to find her at home about six. If she isn't there, her maid will tell you where she is, and you might look her up.”
It was a curious mission—the kind of duty one would rarely delegate to another. Yet, somehow, it was characteristic of the gentleman to be frank and businesslike, even in a matter of benevolence. But how was I to learn what sum “she really needed”?
I took a train in the morning, and about six that afternoon called at the rooms of Miss Manning, in Waverly Place. She had gone to dine at Delmonico's, the maid told me.