"I suppose I am," answered Walter, smiling at a question which admitted of two or three significations.
Jessie thought of but one. Her father liked Walter very much, even though his mother was a Bellenger; consequently it must be something about William himself which prompted that remark, and as Jessie usually echoed her father's sentiments, she felt, the old disagreeable sensation giving way, and before they reached the farm-house she was chatting as gayly with Walter, as if nothing had ever come between them.
That night Walter and Jessie sat together in the little portico, which was securely shaded from the sun by Aunt Debby's thrifty hop vines. Walter was telling Jessie of his recent visit, and how his grandfather cried when he stood in the room where he was married nearly fifty years before.
"I supposed old people outlived all their romance," said Jessie, adding laughingly, as she plucked the broad green leaves growing near her head, "I don't think I could love any body but father fifty years,—could you?"
"It would depend a good deal upon the person I loved," returned Walter, and the look he gave Jessie seemed to say that it would not be a hard matter to love her through all time.
Jessie saw the look, and while it thrilled her with a sudden emotion of pleasure, it involuntarily reminded her of what William had said of the valedictory, and abruptly changing the conversation she said:
"Mr. Bellenger told me your speech was very good. May I see it for myself?"
Walter was a fine orator, and knew that the favor with which his speech had been received was in a great measure owing to the manner in which it was delivered. He was willing for Jessie to have heard it, but he felt a natural reluctance in permitting her to read it. Jessie saw his hesitancy, and it strengthened the suspicion which before had hardly existed.
"Yes, let me see it," she said. "You are surely not afraid of me!" and she persisted in her entreaties until he gave it into her hands, and then joined his grandfather, while she returned to her room, and striking a light, abandoned herself to the reading of the valedictory; and as she read it seemed even to her that she had heard some portion of it before.
"Yes, I have!" she exclaimed, as she came upon a strikingly expressed and peculiar idea. "I have read that in print," and in Jessie's heart there was a sore spot, for the losing confidence in Walter was terrible to her. "He is not strictly honorable," she said, and laying her face upon the roll of paper, she cried to think how she had been deceived.