“Viola came home to me this morning, Mr. Maxwell, and confessed everything that happened last night; the reception of this letter from Mr. Desha, avowing his repentance and begging that the marriage should go on today, nearly broke the poor girl’s heart.”
Rolfe Maxwell looked at the speaker, asking, abruptly:
“And she would have forgiven him—taken him back?”
“Can you doubt it? She made too much of a lovers’ quarrel in the first place, and she ought to have known he would repent before today, as he did, for his letter was sent at the first peep of dawn. Now you can realize what your officious intermeddling has done!”
The young man could not refrain from answering, bitterly:
“Then you call it officious intermeddling to have saved your daughter from the violent death she sought in her frantic despair of life?”
Judge Van Lew bit his lip, and flushed at the slight reminder, answering:
“No; we both owe you a debt of gratitude for that brave deed, and we should owe you more if you had persuaded Viola to come home and be reasonable, instead of luring her into that unsuitable marriage.”
“Did your daughter accuse me of luring her into that marriage?”
The words dropped coldly from the young man’s lips, and the judge fidgeted under his anxious scrutiny as he retorted: