True to his trust, Will gave the note to Marian the first time that he met her, after she was well enough to come down stairs as usual.
“It is from Mr. Raymond,” he said, and Marian’s face was scarlet as she took it and looked into his eye with an eager, searching glance, to see if he knew her secret.
But he did not, and with spirits which began to ebb, she broke the seal and read the few brief lines, half smiling as she thought how very formal and businesslike they were. But it was Frederic’s handwriting, and when sure Will did not see her she pressed it to her lips.
“What you do that for?” asked little Fred whose sharp eyes saw everything not intended for them to see.
“Sh—sh,” said Marian; but the child persisted. “Say, what you tiss that letter for?”
Will Gordon was standing with his back to her, but, at this strange question, he turned quickly and fastened his eyes on Marian’s face, as if he would fathom her inmost soul.
“There’s something there,” she said, passing the note again over her lips as if she would brush the “something” away.
This explanation was wholly satisfactory to Fred, who, with childish simplicity, asked, “Did you get it?”
But Will was not quite certain, and for several days he puzzled his brain with wondering whether “Marian Grey really did kiss Frederic Raymond’s note or not.” If so, why did she? She could not be in love with a man she had never seen. She was not weak enough for that, and at last rejecting it as an impossibility and accepting the troublesome “something” as a reality, his mind became at rest upon that subject.