“You would make her the heroine of another great scandal if you had your way, sir!”
“Bah! you’re jealous, Mattie,” he answered gayly, and the pert young lady kicked over his waste basket, tousled his gray locks with her white fingers, threw him a saucy kiss, and flirted out of the room.
He gazed after her admiringly, muttering:
“Great fun, that girl! I wish little Eva had her spirit and liked me as well. She is only acting the prude, of course. The heroine of so awful a scandal cannot be hard to win. She is worth an effort, the proud little beauty, and I will not give her up, though I will act distant and offended till I throw her off her guard. Ah, those pouting red lips! A kiss were well worth half my year’s salary, would she but sell it at that price!”
He let Eva severely alone for a week, and she faithfully performed her duties, silently looking and hoping every day for a sight of Doctor Rupert again. Every day of his absence was like a month to her heart, and she caught herself wishing that he would write her a few lines just to let her know that she was not forgotten.
But no letter came, no token save a beautiful box by mail of her favorite bonbons. Inside the lid was a card with his name only, but it was traced in the same familiar writing as the love poems, and Eva instantly thrilled with joy, though presently came a perplexing thought:
“How did he know me before I came to the asylum, when I lived at Stony Ledge? I never saw any one there like him. It is very strange.”
She racked her memory hopelessly for some means of identifying him with her past.
She remembered at last that on infrequent occasions the whole family had sometimes attended worship at a church seven miles away, going all together in gran’ther’s large Jersey wagon.
Eva decided that Doctor Rupert must have made one of the congregation at this Methodist church in the woods.