Without waiting for her daughter to read the column through, Mrs. Trevalyn cried, excitedly:
“You must recall him, Queenie; indeed you must, my love!”
“It is too late now, mother,” answered Miss Trevalyn, bitterly. “He has gone, left the hotel and Newport last night, so I heard some one remark at the breakfast table this morning.”
Mrs. Trevalyn went promptly into hysterics, and then fainted outright.
Queenie uttered no moan, not even a cry.
“Poor mamma,” she groaned, “it would be almost better if life ended for her here and now, rather than live to face the future before us!”
In that moment Queenie Trevalyn knew the truth, whatever of love her shallow heart had been capable of feeling, had gone out to the man whose heart the cold hand of her ambition had thrust from her forever. And she had turned from him in such scorn and anger—that was the crudest remembrance of all! But for that she might have recalled him; for the heir of such a fortune could not long hide himself in obscurity. But would he ever forgive her for casting him aside so lightly?
“He loved me—and with such a man, to love once is to love forever!” she told herself, and this thought buoyed up her flagging spirits.
“Yes, I will reclaim him,” she ruminated, pressing her hands closely together over her throbbing heart. “He will never know about Ray Challoner, or his proposal. I will tell him a young girl’s ‘no’ always yields to ‘yes,’ if the wooer is persistent. Yes, I will win him back, and thus avert the poverty that stares us in the face. Of course he has gone directly back to New York, to the address mentioned in this newspaper article.”
And to this address Queenie Trevalyn sent the following telegram: