"I've wondered what I can do to make amends," he continued. "Do you think I might double the amount of his fee?"
"No, no," I begged earnestly, a sudden sense of disgust at the thought of such a thing. "No, don't try to offer Alfred money."
Poor Richard! Was there nothing in the world he could do except trample upon people's feelings then offer to pay them to get in a good humor again? He had insulted Alfred, who was a hero, then suggested offering him money to wipe out the stain. He had neglected and offended me this miserable day—but he had given me a string of pearls!
CHAPTER XVI
THE IDES OF MARCH
"Love's second summer," was the name Mammy Lou bestowed on the troubled period of my engagement with Richard Chalmers which followed the portentous events chronicled in the last few chapters.
"A love affair ain't no different from a baby," she would say to me sometimes, as her quick eye saw that all was not going well, and her maternal pity for me caused her to forgive the disappointment I had given her in my choice of a lover. "It's bound to have some miz'ry as well as joy mixed along with it. Why, you can't no more make true love run smooth than you can play a 'juice harp' with false teeth."
True love! Oh the irony of the words! So many months have passed since the happenings that I last recorded that I can look back now and dispassionately dissect even the motives of many things which transpired during that gilded year. For it proved to be only a gilded year, while I thought at the time that it was a golden one. And I can see, among many other strange and bewildering things, that at the moment I saw Alfred Morgan stand up and bravely defy Richard's selfish tyranny, the scales seemed to fall from my eyes and I knew then which was the false and which the true. That I did not act upon this knowledge and follow the dictates of my intuition, I afterward regretted more poignantly than it often befalls the lot of a girl to rue a guiltless deed.
On that November night when I stood in the dining-room and counted out and stored away the Chalmers' family silver while Richard stood by and suggested appeasing Alfred's outraged pride by a gift of money, I felt an almost overpowering desire to fly precipitately away from the great, gleaming house with its Midas-like master, who, as I remembered for the first time with a shudder, was also my master.