Several times she looked around to see if he was making his usual morning tour through the shop, but she did not see him. In fact it was almost noon when she saw him come out of his office and go around among the work people. And she saw at a glance that, as Mr. Jones had said, he looked pale and low-spirited.
Feeling sure that he would come to her table before long, Hattie took the letter addressed to him from her pocket, and laid it upon the corner of the table, where his eye would be sure to fall upon it the first thing when he approached.
And then, with more tremor than she liked, but which she could not for her life restrain, she went on with her task.
It lacked but a little of the noon hour when she heard his well-known step close to her table. And she trembled when she replied to his kind salutation, “Good-morning, Miss Hattie.”
At that instant his eye caught sight of the letter, and his face flushed as he said, in a low tone: “Heaven bless you for this quick reply,” snatched it up, thrust it inside his vest over his beating heart, and went as fast as he could go to his office.
Hattie never was so glad to hear the signal to knock off work for dinner as she was then. For she could not keep her eyes on her work. She was thinking how he must feel when he read her letter, for she had known what love was, and what disappointment was, too, and she pitied him from the inmost depth of her woman’s heart.
And he? Locking himself in his private office, he quickly opened the letter on which he felt all his future life depended. With pallor on his face he read those words, written so kindly, yet blasting the brightest hope he had ever cherished.
“It is even as I feared,” he murmured. “The flush in her face when I returned that sketch which she said had been sent to her by a dear friend, should have told me not to hope, had I not been too blind. The occupant of that wild mountain home—he who is pictured as kneeling there above that rushing river—is the happy man, and I—I have nothing on earth to hope for.”
He folded her letter in his own, pressed it to his lips, and placed it in an inner pocket over his heart. And he sat there, silent and still, while tears came in his blue eyes, and yet he made no complaint. To him she was an angel, but, alas! not his angel.
He appreciated her delicacy and her noble sense of honor in returning his letter, and he felt the full value of the friendship she offered.