“Do you regret it?” he asked, sadly.
“I—I—don’t know. Cousin Jessie always advised me never to marry poor. It is Jessie Stirling, I mean. She loaned you the negatives, did she not?”
“Yes; but I am sorry she put such notions in your pretty head. Perhaps you will take back your promise, learning I am poor.”
“Oh, no, no, no! Never! I could not marry any one without love, but Jessie says she would take a fright if he had a million dollars. However, she has ‘hooked,’ so she says, a big fish, rich, and young, and handsome, too, and she wants, when she is married, for me to visit her so she can make a grand match for me.”
“I will save her the trouble,” said Ray Chester. “Love in a cottage will be our portion, my darling, but you are so lovely that I shall paint a picture of you that will perhaps make my fortune!”
Suddenly a shadow clouded her lovely eyes. She had remembered for the first time her guardian’s threat of yesterday.
“You look sad, Leola. Are you repenting your promise already?” her lover cried, anxiously.
“I shall never repent. I believe you are my fate!” the girl exclaimed, earnestly, and to herself she thought:
“I will not tell him of my guardian’s foolish plans for wedding me to a rich man yet, for perhaps he will give it up after my frank refusal to obey him. No; I will not even think of it again; he cannot coerce me, for I will tell him I have already chosen my husband.”