“I thank you a hundred times!” she cried, blushing with joy, and adding: “Now I know you will forgive Charley and call him son.”
He answered gravely:
“Do you think if I will forgive him and receive him again he will be content with that? For you know I have disinherited him out of justice to Rosalind, whom I am to marry.”
“Oh, sir, if you marry Rosalind, Charley will not strive for the miserable money. We have been happy without it for more than a year. But—but—I prophesy that you will never marry Rosalind, because you will learn, before it is too late, that she is unworthy of you!”
He frowned, and said:
“Nay, you have already wronged Rosalind enough; let her name rest. She will surely be my bride.”
Berenice sighed and held out her hand, replying:
“If I believed that, I should be very sorry for you, sir. But I must be going now. My poor boy is wearying for me this long time. Tell me, do you forgive him? May he come to-morrow?”
“He may come to-day. I am too impatient to wait,” the senator cried, with a sudden outburst of tenderness.