“Name it, Rosalind.”
“You have not asked your new love yet, and you are not sure she will love you in return?”
“I am reasonably sure,” he said, with the confidence of a sanguine mind.
“How long will it be before you can have your answer?”
“A week—perhaps two,” he replied, suddenly remembering that Berry was yet precariously ill.
“Then this is what I ask you, Charley, dear—yes, still dear, despite the wound in my heart. Keep our secret until you have your new love’s acceptance of your suit. Let us remain to the world lovers still, until you are plighted to another. Then I will release you from your vow.”
“It shall be as you say,” he answered, so grateful for her promise of release, that he did not think it mattered going on with the farce of an engagement a while longer.
“If it will make it any less painful for you, Rose, you can say you jilted me, you know. I shouldn’t mind at all!”
“Thank you—I will think it over,” she answered dejectedly, and the last glimpse he had of her was just as she hid her face in her hands again and sat silent, like a statue of despair.
He went immediately down to the keeper’s cottage, as he did every day, for news of Berry, and his heart leaped with joy when Mrs. Cline told him there was a marked change for the better, and the invalid had begun to take notice and to try to talk a little.