“Do you mean Miss Westbrooke?” Tom said, in a tone which made Godfrey turn quickly to look at him, while a suspicion which hurt him strangely flashed through his mind.
“Yes, I mean Miss Westbrooke. She is a young lady now, I suppose. Is she at home, and pretty as ever?”
Tom had heard from his sister of Godfrey’s engagement, and as the world had long ago given Robert Macpherson to Julia Schuyler, he had nothing to dread from either, and launched forth at once into praises of Gertie Westbrooke, the most beautiful creature upon whom the sun ever shone, as well as the purest, and sweetest, and best.
“Why, there is not a man, woman, or child in Hampstead that would not fall down and worship her if she wished it.”
“Upon my word, Tom, you must be far gone,” Godfrey said, with that little hurt still in his heart. “I should not wonder if you and I were in the same boat, eh?”
He looked curiously at Tom, who answered him frankly and sadly withal:
“No, Godfrey, she won’t have a drunken dog like me. She told me so herself,—not in those words, to be sure, but in the sweet, gentle way she has of telling the truth for one’s good. I swore then I’d reform, and I have not been drunk in a year, and if I ever am a man again, it will be Gertie Westbrooke who saved me, Heaven bless her!”
There was a tremor in Tom’s voice as he said this, and then added, abruptly:
“Yes, she’s at the Hill. You’ll see her when you get home.”
And so when Godfrey sat at last in the railway car beside his betrothed, to whom he paid the attentions she required of him, his thoughts were not so much with her as with the girl at Schuyler Hill, whom every man, woman and child admired, if Tom’s word was to be trusted. Alice, too, thought of her, and calling across the aisle to Julia, asked: