"I have as good a right to love him as you have. I do love him."
The man has been eloquent and self-forgetful. The woman has lost her command. Tears are coming in her eyes. Shame is mantling her cheeks. David Lockwin is startled.
George Harpwood passes in the distance with Esther's mother on his arm.
"Esther, you know me, with all my faults. I think we could be happy together--we three--you and I and the boy. Will you marry me? Will you be a mother to my little boy? He is lonesome while I am gone!"
The matter is settled. It has come by surprise. If David Lockwin had foreseen it, he would have left the field open to Harpwood.
If Esther Wandrell had foreseen it, she would have shunned David Lockwin. It is her dearest hope, and yet--
CHAPTER II
THE PEOPLE'S IDOL
If David Lockwin had planned to increase all his prospects, and if all his plans had worked with precision, he could in nowise have pushed his interests more powerfully than by marrying Esther Wandrell.
It might have been said of Lockwin that he was impractical; that he was a dreamer. He had done singular things. He had not studied the ways of public opinion.