That was the very opening he needed, to utter that which was weighing heavily on his mind; but without giving him the opportunity, although his lips had opened to speak, she went on, blithely:
“I am going to study hard and become very wise, like the lady I am visiting here. But, oh, I forgot; you do not know Queenie—Mrs. Brown, I mean; but, dear me, it seems so odd to call her Mrs. anybody, she is so much more like an unmarried girl. Oh, she is so lovely, and graceful, and sweet. Do you know, it occurred to me only yesterday that had you seen her first, even though she is a widow, you might have fallen in love with her instead of me.”
This was becoming almost unendurable. Who knew better than he the charms of Queenie?
“I am going to be stately and dignified like she is, and I am going to be wise and womanly. Do you think you will love me quite as much then as you do now?”
He could safely answer “Yes,” for he did not love her at all.
“Thank you so much for assuring me of it,” she murmured, seizing his white hands and covering them with kisses. “Now I shall begin with a will.”
The girl did not seem to notice the shadow that was growing each moment still deeper on his face, and the look of despair that was gathering in his troubled eyes, and the gravity, almost to sternness, that had settled about his mouth.
Each moment this bright, gay child, who loved him so dearly, and was telling him so in every word, act and deed, was making the task before him but the harder.
How would she take it when he told her that she need make no sacrifices, or study, on his account, for he never intended to see her again?
“You do not know how much I have thought about you since I left you that day on the farm,” she went on. “When you faded from my sight in the distance, though I strained my eyes hard to look back at you, standing there on the old porch, I bowed my head and wept so piteously that poor old Lawyer Abbot was in great fear lest my heart should break. I never knew until then what love, that they talk about, really was.