The blood bounded hotly through his veins as he read:
“My Own Darling Ray:
“You must not come in the morning as usual, because the Stirlings are coming, Uncle Hermann says, and I do not want them to know of our engagement yet, for they both are very mercenary, and would take sides against you, and want me to marry old Bennett, because he is rich, while you are poor! As if I would have that dumpy old fright on any terms—no, not even if he were President of the United States! Oh, why didn’t the old silly lose his heart to dear Miss Tuttle instead of me, when she loves the very ground he walks on, and would make him such a suitable wife? Fate seems to play at cross purposes with us, my darling Ray, but we will outwit our enemies and be happy yet.
“You had better not come to Wheatlands to-day, but if you will stay in all afternoon, I will try to make an errand to Widow Gray’s, and we can talk things over and make plans for the future.
“Oh, isn’t it just hateful the way things seem to work against our happiness? Just think, if only Jessie Stirling hadn’t got engaged to a fortune already, we might get my rotund suitor in love with her, and she could have all the money she craves.
“Be sure to stay in until I come this afternoon.
Your own loving
“Leola.”
Widower Bennett stamped upon the ground in a fury, hissing out the epithets she had used in writing of him in the bitterest voice ever heard:
“‘Old Bennett!’ ‘Dumpy old fright!’ ‘Old silly!’ ‘My rotund suitor!’ She would not marry me if I were President of the United States! Why, now, I swear I will marry the little spitfire if it costs me my fortune!”
In this rage he remounted his mare and galloped on to Wheatlands, between whose master and himself there ensued an excited interview.