“It’s a hard thing, old fellow, but you will have to pull through. No Schuyler ever yet broke his word.”
He was very attentive to Alice that night, while in her delight at his attentions she forgave Gertie for walking with him from Mrs. Vandeusenhisen’s, though the germ of jealousy was planted in her mind, and she resolved to keep a close watch of the girl, who, with blanched cheeks and throbbing pulse, was, at that very hour, listening to what very nearly concerned the little heiress of thirty thousand a year.
CHAPTER XXXIX.
COL. SCHUYLER INTERVIEWS GERTIE.
Col. Schuyler was not quite satisfied with his interview with Godfrey, or his promise to keep his word and marry Alice Creighton. No doubt he meant to do it, but Godfrey was impulsive and hot-headed, and loved another with a depth and fervency which astonished the coldblooded man. All day he had been haunted with the flushed, excited face, and the thrilling voice which had said so passionately, “I love Gertie Westbrooke so much that I would rather live with her on a crust a day than share with another the splendors of the world.”
Perhaps during the long summer days, when they would be thrown together, he would forget his word of honor, and tell her of his love, and what then? She would listen, of course, unless some powerful obstacle were interposed to keep her from it, and that obstacle the colonel would interpose in the shape of Gertie’s own promise and sense of honor. He could trust her better than his son, and he meant to put her to the test, even if by doing it he wrung her heart cruelly, and awoke within her a sleeping passion, of whose existence she possibly did not know. And yet the colonel had no antipathy to Gertie; on the contrary, he liked her very much, and thought hers the most beautiful face he had ever seen, if he excepted Edith’s, which it in some respects resembled, and had Gertie’s forty pounds a year been forty thousand, or even half that amount, he would have given the preference to her, notwithstanding she had no family, or friends, or name. But the colonel held money high, and prized the luxuries which money brings, and did not wish to live without them. And money was not quite as plentiful with Col. Schuyler as it once had been. He had met with some heavy losses recently, and now that little Arthur had come, and other children might yet call him father, Godfrey’s fortune would be much less than he had hoped to make it, and so Godfrey must marry rich, and his love be put aside, and Gertie must help to do it, and be the means, if need be, of breaking her own and Godfrey’s heart.
“Gertie,” he said to her, very pleasantly and affably, when just before dark he found her watering a bed of geraniums near the south wing windows; “Gertie, can I see you alone a few moments? I have something to say to you.”
“Certainly,” she answered, and putting down her watering-pot, and taking off her garden gloves and hat, she followed him to the same room where, earlier in the day, Godfrey had declared his love for her, and where now she was to promise to reject that love should it ever be offered to her, for that was the colonel’s intention. He knew Gertie well enough to know that her word once passed she would keep it, though her heart broke in the keeping. But how should he commence? What should he say to the young girl whose blue eyes were confronting him so steadily?
“Gertie,” he began at last, “I brought you here to ask a favor of you; a great favor, which I hope you will grant.”
“Yes, Col. Schuyler, anything I can do for you, I will,” she said, and he went on: