"Do you desire that most? Then what next?"
"You know, love. My ambition is next—and all I have in the world besides you."
"You want to marry me and be governor of this state—now, on your honor, which do you desire the more—Richard?"
He threw his arms around me again, as I called his name, and stopped my mouth with kisses.
"Don't jest," he begged. "It is sacrilege to-night."
Then we strayed from the heights again, and fell to talking about his ambition, and from that to more commonplace affairs still—how we were going to spend the next few days, and how we might arrange that to-morrow, Sunday, could be passed together. Together, that was all that either of us desired.
"I'll come early enough in the morning to go to church with you," he suggested, "then we'll have luncheon at Beauregard's, if we can get Mrs. Clayborne to go with us, and—"
"Mrs. Clayborne?" I asked in surprise. "What for?"
"Ann," and he took my hand gently, as if he might be admonishing a child, "I consider it entirely out of place for a woman to go out alone with a man, even if the two are engaged. Evidently your mother has never given the matter as much consideration as I have always insisted should be used in the case of my sister—for I have seen you alone with this friend, Doctor Morgan, several times. When I happened to meet you in Beauregard's the night of the circus," there was a struggle here between amusement and sarcasm, "I thought, of course, he was some very close relative. But I find that he is only a dear friend, with whom you take long country drives—and who gives you heirloom volumes of Byronic poetry."
"We have known each other since he first started to college," I stated, by way of defense, but I own with less assurance than I should have used if there had not been before me the picture of the scene in Ann Lisbeth's library.