“Viola, I was hasty in refusing. Indeed, I should like to oblige you in this matter, if you are not in too great a hurry over it. Could you give me three months?”
“Yes; for I am going South in a few days, to be absent several months, so that I should be quite satisfied to have it done by the time of my return,” she cried, sweetly.
“Then I will undertake it,” he replied, glad to disappoint Desha’s scheme.
Viola took out the fine cabinet photograph of Rolfe Maxwell and handed it to him in silent emotion, while both men gazed with interest at the handsome rival who had seized the prize they had let slip from their grasp.
Florian’s heart throbbed with keen jealousy of the dead man, and Desha uttered a cry of recognition and surprise.
“What is it?” cried Viola, turning eagerly to him; and he answered:
“I thought I had never seen the man you married, but I recognized him instantly as the young man who saved your life the day you skated through the ice. But of course he told you?”
Viola’s eyes flashed through starting tears.
“No; he did not tell me! Can it really be true?” she exclaimed.
Mae Sweetland clasped her hand, and answered, unexpectedly: