It was Anna’s, and the next moment he held her in his arms. But she would not suffer him to keep her there, and with a quiet dignity which for an instant startled him beyond the power to speak or act, she put his arm away, and standing apart from him, told him of her resolution, and reproached him with his duplicity, asking him how he could tell Adam that he was about to be married.
“Because I am,” he replied. “I am not to blame for his believing silly little Milly to be the bride elect. Won’t it be famous, though, for you to order round your former lover? I’ve engaged him for a long job, and you ought to have seen how glad he was of the work, thinking, of course, how much he should earn for you. I came near laughing in his face when he hoped I should be as happy with Miss Mildred as he expected to be with you.”
“You shan’t speak so of Adam Floyd!” and Anna’s little foot beat the ground impatiently, while indignant tears glittered in her blue eyes as she again reiterated that Adam Floyd should be her husband.
“Not while I live!” Herbert responded almost fiercely, for he saw in her manner a determination he had never witnessed before.
As well as he was capable of doing he loved Anna Burroughs, and the fact that she was pledged to another added fuel to the flame.
“What new freak has taken my fickle goddess?” he asked, looking down upon her with a mocking sneer about his mouth as she told him why she could not go with him.
He knew she was in earnest at last, and, dropping his jesting tone, he made her sit down beside him, while he used every possible argument to dissuade her from her purpose, working first upon her pride, flattering her vanity, portraying the happiness of a tour through Europe, a winter in Paris, and lastly touching upon the advantages of being lady supreme at Castlewild, with a house in the city, for winter. And as changeable, ambitious, Anna listened, she felt her resolution giving way, felt the ground which she had taken slipping from beneath her feet without one effort to save herself.
“It seems terrible to wrong Adam,” she said, and, by the tone of her voice, Herbert knew the victory was two thirds won.
“Adam will do well enough,” he replied. “People like him never die of broken hearts! He’s a good fellow, but not the one for you; besides, you know he’s what they call pious, just like Milly; and, I presume, he’ll say it was not so wicked for you to cheat him as to perjure yourself, as you surely would, by promising to love and honor and all that when you didn’t feel a bit of it!”
“What was that you said of Miss Atherton?” Anna asked eagerly, for she had caught the word pious, and it made her heart throb with pain, for she knew that Herbert Dunallen could not say as much of her!