THE PROPOSAL.
With all possible haste Claire summoned the housekeeper and gave Faynie into her charge.
It was more than disappointing to her to have Faynie lapse into unconsciousness just as she had reached the most interesting part of her story and was about to tell her how very romantically handsome Lester had proposed. It had been just like a page from a French novel.
She little dreamed that the art of making love was an old one to him.
Kendale had gone to the Fairfax mansion with the express purpose of proposing marriage that evening, for only that day Mr. Conway, the old cashier, had told him confidentially that the affairs of the great dry goods concern were in a bad shape—that the check for the hundred and twenty-five thousand which had just been paid out had crippled them sorely.
And, after a moment's pause and with a husky voice, he added slowly: "If something like three hundred thousand dollars is not raised within the next sixty days you are a ruined man, Mr. Armstrong."
This announcement fell with crushing force upon Kendale, who had imagined that there could be no end to the flow of money that was pouring in upon him.
"There's only one way of raking in that much money in a hurry, and that is by marrying the little lame heiress," he soliloquized.
It so happened that he had an engagement to call there on this particular evening, and he resolved that he would not let the opportunity slip past him—that there was no time like the present.
Fortune, fate, call it what you will, favored Kendale on this particular occasion, as it usually did. He found Claire alone in the drawing-room practising some sheet music which he had sent her a few days before.