“It certainly looks very suspicious,” he said in reply; “still it is possible that some one else may have committed the robbery here—another one of the gang, for instance—and passed off the note upon O’Rourke afterward, and that Bangs had had no connection with the deed or knowledge of it afterward.”
“Yes,” returned Miriam, slowly and thoughtfully, “I suppose it is possible, yet I cannot help feeling that my suspicion is just; I am morally certain of it; and I shall find it difficult to treat Bangs with the barest civility should he ever call here again.”
“He will be here again; I haven’t a doubt of it,” Ronald said, laughingly. “It’s plain that he comes a wooing, Mirry; but I warn you that I shall never give my consent to the match.”
“It will never be asked by me,” she said, her eyes flashing and the hot blood surging over face and neck at the thought of the baseness of the man and the audacity of his pursuit of her. “Oh, Ronald, I would die a thousand deaths rather than link my life with that of so sordid, cruel, haughty, and unprincipled a wretch!”
“And I,” said Ronald, dropping his bantering tone and speaking with emotion, “should even prefer to see my darling Sister Miriam sleeping peacefully in her coffin; though what we should ever do without her I cannot tell.”
“I think you are not likely to find out very soon, Ron dear,” she said, forcing a smile, for her heart was very heavy; “I’m strong and healthy, and hope to live till you are all ready to do without me.”
“In that case you certainly will not die young, sister mine,” he responded, with a look of strong, brotherly affection. “But you are worn out with the cares and labors of the day; so we’ll say good-night; and don’t, I beg of you, sit up to sew, or lie awake brooding over losses and the perplexing problem how we are to pay off that troublesome mortgage. It’s a good omen that a part of the stolen money has been recovered, and I do believe we’ll be helped through the whole difficulty. Just think what good Christians our father and mother were, and how many prayers they sent up for us, their loved children.”
“Yes; it is often the greatest comfort to me to think of that, and of what the Bible says about a good man leaving an inheritance to his children’s children,” she said, smiling through tears.
The next few weeks were a time of heavy trial to Miriam. Bangs beset her at every turn, meeting her in her walks and rides, coming on her when she was in the field, and could not escape from him, and urging his suit with persuasions, promises, and threats, determined to win her, in spite of the most firm and decided rejection repeated again and again.
And Warren Charlton, whose visits were always so welcome, stayed away. She would hardly own it to herself, but that was an added drop in her cup of bitterness, as she wondered vaguely what she could have said or done to offend him.