“I know that you spoke in jest, my sweetheart,” Ray Challoner went on, smoothly, “to think otherwise would be to drive me mad, my heart is so entirely yours.”
“Forgive me,” answered Jess, bravely, choking down a great sob that threatened to break forth and betray the state of her feelings.
She listened like one in a far-off troubled dream while he talked to her of his plans for the future, and ended by praying her to name the day when he should claim her as his own.
“I—do not know,” murmured the girl, wearily; “I—I will leave everything to you, Mr. Dinsmore,” and if he had not been so jubilant over the victory and the fortune so near his grasp, he would have noticed the suspicion of tears in her lovely, dark, mournful, despairing eyes.
“Then I say, let it take place at once, my own,” he declared, “the sooner the better, say a week from to-day!”
Jess shuddered, as with a sudden chill, but she kept control of her nerves by a great effort. He must not see how obnoxious the very thought of marriage with him was to her.
She wondered vaguely how she was to pass the rest of her life with him when she found a few hours so intolerable as to almost drive her mad.
“Your silence gives sweet consent, my own charming little bride to be,” he cried, exultantly, and it was with difficulty that he restrained himself from embracing her then and there.
He took his leave soon after with that matter settled completely to his satisfaction, the ceremony was to be performed just a week from that day. He would have named the morrow, but that he was sure Jess would be suspicious that there was something wrong in his intense eagerness to claim her. Of all things he must avoid raising her suspicions.
He was anxious to get away from her, and celebrate his victory over the outcome of his desperate and daring plan for a fortune, by indulging in as much champagne as he could stand, for once in his life; for there would soon be an end to reckless indulgence, at least for a time. Until the Dinsmore fortune was within his grasp, and he had turned it into cash, he would be obliged to play the part of a model husband.