Willie was almost twenty now, with an overstrained sense of honor, sharpened in intensity by his sister’s fault. He was sensitively alive to the disgrace that rested on the family name, and had brooded over it until he had grown morbid. His handsome young face remained dark and cloudy after Mr. Finley went out, and his thoughts were so absorbed that he could scarcely wait upon the customers who came in and out of the neat store.
“Strange that he is always suggesting the thought that Pansy may be alive, after all. Perhaps he knows more than he chooses to tell,” he muttered. And the thought wore on him so that he went to the corner of a shelf, where his stepfather kept a private bottle, and took a drink of brandy to steady his shaking nerves.
Then, from a case in a hiding place of his own he took a small pistol and examined it with gloomy eyes.
“It is all right,” he muttered hoarsely; then, at the sound of a step entering the store, he replaced it hurriedly, and turned around, to face Mr. North, the father of the girl he loved.
“Good afternoon, Mr. North. What can I do for you?” he inquired politely.
Mr. North was only a clerk, but he was inordinately proud and ambitious, and his face darkened with anger as he returned brusquely:
“I want a few words with you, young man. My wife tells me that you have been paying some attention to my daughter Kate?”
“Ye-es, Mr. North,” Willie stammered, with a boyish flush, adding anxiously: “I trust you have no objection to my love for her?”
“Nonsense! You are nothing but a boy,” replied Mr. North curtly, and the handsome young face before him deepened in color at the taunt; but he answered, in a manly way:
“I am almost twenty, and my stepfather has promised to give me a partnership in the store when I am twenty-one. My prospects are fair.”