“I am really glad if I was the cause of preventing you from committing so terrible an act as suicide,” said the girl, solemnly, “for that would have been very wicked.”
“If you have lost all that makes life worth the living, you care little enough how soon existence ends for you,” he replied, artfully; and with a well-simulated heartbroken sigh, which caused little Jess to begin for the first time to pity him.
He saw her softened mood in her eyes, and followed up his advantage with adroit skill, and, ere Jess was quite aware of it, he was proposing to her for the second time.
“I do not want your answer to-day, little girl,” he went on. “Take a week to consider it, if you require that length of time, and in the meantime, talk it over with Mrs. Bryson, or any one else who has your true interest at heart. Will you do this?”
Jess could not find it in her heart to refuse this request to the man who had risked his own life to save hers.
“I am going to run down to New Orleans for a few days,” he continued, “and when I return you can have your answer ready for me.”
Early that forenoon he took his leave, promising Mrs. Bryson that he would be back by the end of the week.
After he had gone, Jess made a clean breast of what had occurred, and the fact that she was to give Mr. Dinsmore his answer when he returned as to whether she would marry him or not, to Mrs. Bryson, who expressed herself as delighted that he had thought so well of her as to propose, a remark which Jess did not relish, as it savored of the idea in her mind that the old housekeeper considered the handsome Mr. Dinsmore very much above her—a thought which she greatly resented.
From the moment in which she divulged the secret which she had concluded at first not to tell to any one, Mrs. Bryson gave her no peace. Every hour in the day she dinned into the girl’s ears the practicability of her union with Mr. Dinsmore, which her benefactor, the young man’s uncle, had foreseen, and so earnestly desired.
It was all Jess heard from morning until night; she had it for breakfast, luncheon and dinner, until she fairly grew irritable at the sound of the name of Dinsmore, and hated the bearer of it, despite the fact that he had rendered her so valuable a service. She could find no peace until she had in a fit of desperation promised Mrs. Bryson that it should be as she wished—she would say yes to Mr. Dinsmore when he returned, and that the wedding should take place whenever he desired.