The question was decided for her by seeing him approaching.
“Good-evening, sir,” she said, nodding and smiling; “won’t you come in?”
He returned her greeting and accepted her invitation, asking, “Have you some news for me? I seem to read tidings in your face.”
“Yes; I have found out to a certainty that you were wrong and I was right in that little talk we had the other day.”
“Pardon me, but I am not quite sure that I understand to what you refer, my good lady,” he said, lightly, following her into the porch, where she gave him a chair, taking another near at hand herself.
“I am just from Lakeside,” she said, giving him a mischievous look and smile. “I’ve had a private interview with my friend Miriam, and learned from her own lips that she utterly detested Bangs on account of his odious character, and that her emotion on hearing of his awful end was because he had gone directly from an interview with her, in which her firm refusal to accept the offer of his hand had put him in a towering passion, and that had led to his murder of Barney Nolan, for which, as you know, he was lynched. So poor, dear Miriam felt at the time of hearing what had happened that she was partly responsible for their deaths, and she can’t even yet quite put aside the feeling.”
Charlton’s countenance had grown radiant.
“A thousand thanks, my dear Mrs. Jasper!” he exclaimed; “you have lifted a load from my mind, for, as I see you have already guessed, I am deeply in love with Miss Miriam. Yet, after all,” he sighed, a look of doubt and uncertainty taking the place of the other, “I may fail to win the prize I so covet, for I am quite sensible that it is far beyond my deserts.”
“I entirely agree with you, sir,” she said, teasingly. “I know of no one (now in the market) whom I consider worthy of Miriam Heath. She is, in my estimation, a diamond of the first water.”
“She is, indeed! And you would discourage me from seeking to win her?”