“Adam,” Anna began at last, so low that he scarcely could hear her. “Adam forgive me all that is past. I have been cold and indifferent, have treated you as I ought not, but I am young and foolish, I—I—oh! Adam, I mean to do better. I—”
She could not say, “will banish Dunallen from my mind”—it was not necessary to mention him, she thought; but some explanation must be made, and so, steadying her voice, she told him how dearly she had loved him once, thinking there was not in all the world his equal, but that during the year at a city school she had acquired some foolish notions and had sometimes wished her lover different.
“Not better at heart. You could not be that,” she said, looking him now fully in the face, for she was conscious of meaning what she said, “but—but—”
“You need not finish it, darling; I know what you mean,” Adam said, the cloud lifting in a measure from his brow. “I am not refined one bit, but my Blossom is, and she shall teach me. I will try hard to learn. I will not often make her ashamed. I will even imitate Dunallen, if that will gratify my darling.”
Why would he keep bringing in that name, when the sound of it was so like a dagger to Anna’s heart, and when she wished she might never hear it again? He was waiting for her now in the beech woods she knew, for she was to join him there ere long, not to say what she would have said an hour ago, but to say that she could not, would not wrong the noble man who held her to his bosom so lovingly as he promised to copy Dunallen. And as Anna suffered him to caress her, she felt her olden love coming back. She should be happy with him—happier far than if she were the mistress of Castlewild, and knew that to attain that honor she had broken Adam’s heart.
“As a proof that you trust me fully,” she said, as the twilight shadows deepened around them, “you must let me go home alone, I wish it for a special reason. You must not tell me no,” and the pretty lips touched his bearded cheek.
Adam wanted to walk with her down the pleasant road, where they had walked so often, but he saw she was in earnest, and so he suffered her to depart alone, watching her until the flutter of her light dress was lost to view. Then kneeling by the chair where she had sat so recently, he asked that the cup of joy, placed again in his eager hand, might not be wrested from him, that he might prove worthy of Anna’s love, and that no cloud should ever again come between them.
CHAPTER IV.
IN THE BEECH WOODS.
Herbert Dunallen had waited there a long time, as he thought, and he began to grow impatient. What business had Anna to stay with that old fellow, if she did not mean to have him, and of course she did not. It would be a most preposterous piece of business for a girl like Anna to throw herself away upon such as Adam Floyd, carpenter by trade, and general repairer of things at Castlewild. Whew-ew! and Herbert whistled contemptuously, adding in a low voice, “and yet my lady mother would raise a beautiful rumpus if she knew I was about to make this little village rustic her daughter-in-law. For I am; if there’s one redeeming trait in my character, it’s being honorable in my intentions toward Anna. Most men in my position would only trifle with her, particularly when there was in the background a Mildred Atherton, dreadfully in love with them. I wonder what makes all the girls admire me so?” and the vain young man stroked his mustache complacently, just as a rapid footstep sounded near.