“I have been kind to you, Gertie, have I not, ever since you first came to live with us?”
“Yes, very, very kind,” Gertie answered, wondering at the question, and his reason for reminding her of the kindness.
“I have tried to do you good,” he said, speaking with a little hesitancy now; “first for Mrs. Schuyler’s sake, and lastly because I liked you myself, and was greatly interested in you, and felt that you were no ordinary girl. I tell you this to let you know that the favor I have to ask has nothing to do with you personally. I am your friend, and will be so as long as I live, and provide for you at my death, or sooner if you marry, as you probably will,—girls like you always do, and I,—yes I——”
What was he going to say to her, Gertie wondered, a thought of Tom Barton crossing her mind? Was Col. Schuyler about to advocate his cause? Impossible, she said to herself, and waited impatiently for him to proceed. But she was not at all prepared for the abrupt question with which he finally plunged into the business.
“Gertie, has my son ever made love to you? That is, has he ever said or done anything which under some circumstances might give you reason to think him more interested in you than in another?”
There was a violent start, and Gertie’s face was crimson as she looked across the table at the man questioning her thus, while her thoughts leaped backward to the previous night and the eyes which had looked so tenderly upon her, the hands which had held hers so fast, and the voice so full of passion telling her of the lost letters and saying to her so sadly:
“If you had received them, Gertie,—if you had, I might, oh, who knows what might have been?”
All day long the remembrance of that interview had been in her mind, filling her with a delicious feeling of happiness that Godfrey did care for her, and bringing occasionally a pang of regret as she wondered what would have been had she received his letters. She had never dreamed of marriage in connection with Godfrey. She had always supposed that he belonged to Alice, and so she did not know the real nature of the emotions Godfrey’s language the previous night had called into being until Col. Schuyler tore the veil away and laid her heart before her, bare and palpitating with love for Godfrey, his son. What right had he to question her thus, and how could she answer him, she asked herself, as, with her hands locked together, and the love whose existence she had just discovered swelling and surging in her heart, now with throbs of anguish as she remembered Alice, and now with beats of joy as she thought of Godfrey, she sat motionless and silent, until the colonel spoke again:
“You do not answer me, and from that I infer he has made love to you. Was it last night? He told me he talked with you. Gertie, this must not be. Godfrey is bound to Alice. It was settled years ago in our families. It was his mother’s dying wish. It is the one thing I desire above all others. I have nothing against you, Gertie,—nothing; but Godfrey must marry Alice, and you must not let him break his word to her.”
He spoke rapidly, glancing only once at the face opposite, which was white as ashes, and he could see the slight figure sway a little from side to side, while a sound like a smothered sob broke on his ear, and then Gertie spoke, very low and very decidedly, but with no anger in her voice.