Fair looked up with a quick gleam of interest.
“Tell me about her, Bayard,” she exclaimed curiously.
Something like a shade of embarrassment came across his broad white brow.
“You wouldn’t be jealous, Fair?” he asked uneasily; and she retorted:
“You don’t mean to tell me you were in love with her—a poor working girl?”
“My darling, I do not quite like your tone,” he answered gravely, and a slight flush rose to his brow as he continued: “The girl I spoke of, although only a working girl, was, I am sure, as well worthy my love as one of the daughters of the rich. She was gentle, good, and industrious, and also very beautiful. Indeed, Fair, the girl actually resembled you so much that when I first met you I was startled by the wonderful likeness.”
A roguish smile began to dawn in the wide brown eyes, and she exclaimed, with a pretty pout:
“I thought I was your first love, but this does not look like it, sir.”
Seeing that no shadow of jealousy came into the clear eyes, he continued, more seriously:
“Darling, you never had but one rival. She was the little working girl of whom I spoke. I first saw her on the eve of my departure for Europe, more than two years ago, and as time wore on the strange interest she had awakened in me by her beauty and sweetness kept growing so that in a few months I returned to New York to search for her, with some half-defined intentions of putting aside my pride of class, and educating and marrying her if she proved worthy. But the affair went no further; I did not find her. She had married a man by the name of Loring—by the way, I never knew her name—and gone away.”