He bent over her and whispered: “I have arranged for your pay to be double—we are neighbors, you know—your father and I,—and a pretty girl, like you, need not work always.”
She started and looked at him quickly.
The color went from her cheeks. Then it came again in a crimson tide, so full and rich, that Richard Travis, like Titian with his brush, stood spellbound before the work he had done.
Fearing he had said too much, he dropped his voice and with a twinkle in his eye said:
“For there is Harry—you know.”
All her timidity vanished—her hanging of the head, her silence, her blushes. Instead, there leaped into her eyes that light which Richard Travis had never seen before—the light of a Conway on mettle.
“I hate him.”
“I do not blame you,” he said. “I shall be a—father to you if you will let me.”
He pressed her hand, and raising his hat, was gone.
As he drove away he turned and looked at her slipping across the lawn in the twilight. In his eyes was a look of triumphant excitement.