“Yes, I am,” was Mildred’s reply, and then very rapidly she told her story, not omitting her having overheard him liken her parents to peasants when speaking of them to Mrs. Gardner. “I determined then,” she said, “that if possible I would one day humble your pride, but if I have done so, it has not given me the satisfaction I thought it would, and I am sorry to cause you pain, for I believe you were in earnest when you asked me to be your wife, which I can never be.”
“No,” he answered slowly, like one who had received a blow from which he could not at once recover. “No, you can never be my wife; Mildred Leach; it does not seem possible.”
Then he arose and walked rapidly away, and when the evening boat left Ouchy for Geneva he was on it, going he cared but little where, if by going he could forget the past as connected with Mildred Leach.
“I cannot marry her family,” he said many times during the next few months, when he was wandering everywhere and vainly trying to forget her, for always before him was the face he had never admired so much as when he last saw it, flushed and pale by turns, with a wondrous light in the brown eyes where tears were gathering. “If it were not for her family, or if I could separate her from them, I would not give her up,” he had often thought when in the following May he met her again at the Grand Hotel in Paris, where the Harwoods were stopping.
He could not tell what it was which impressed him with the idea that she had changed her mind, as she came forward to meet him, saying she was glad to see him, and adding that Mr. and Mrs. Harwood had gone to the opera. She seemed very quiet and absent minded at first, and then rousing herself, said to him abruptly, “You did not stop long enough in Ouchy for me to inquire after my family. You must have seen them often since I left home.”
“Yes,—no,” he answered in some embarrassment; “I have of course been to Thornton Park, but I do not remember much about them. I believe your father rents, or did rent, some land of me, but am not sure, as my agent attends to all that.”
“My father is dead,” Mildred answered so sharply as to make him jump and color painfully, as if guilty of a misdemeanor in not knowing that her father was dead.
“I beg your pardon. I am very sorry. I,—yes,—am very sorry,” he began; but she cut him short by saying, “Do you know Hugh McGregor?”
“Oh, yes. I know him well,” and Mr. Thornton brightened perceptibly. “He is my lawyer, and attends to all my business in Rocky Point; a fine fellow,—a very fine fellow. Do you know him?”
“Yes,” Mildred replied, while her breath came heavily, “I know him, and I hear he is to marry my sister Bessie.”