Viola's vanity

by Mrs. Alex. McVeigh Miller

And she thought bitterly of that cold, indifferent young statesman who had resisted all the allurements of her beauty, and who was doubtless wedded to his soaring ambitions.

In her bitterness at Desha, she wrote very tenderly to Florian, filling his heart with delight, and quieting his uneasiness by saying:

“You need not be jealous of Professor Desha; I seldom see him any more. He devotes himself to congressional affairs, and never goes into society now, so I suppose he has forgotten my existence. As for the young man who saved my life, he has never divulged his identity, and does not intend to, I suppose, and I should never give him another thought only that gratitude demands it. Ah, Florian, how I miss you these dull days while I must stay at home and get strong! It is so lonely that I get more time to think about my love for you. Yes, I do love you; you need never doubt that! I look at your photograph often, and kiss it, too, as you do mine! I think that whenever you come back I will let you announce our engagement and set the wedding-day. I wonder what Professor Desha will think when he hears it.”

Florian was in the seventh heaven when he received that letter.

It was the tenderest one she ever wrote him, for very soon she went out again into society, and amid her pleasures and her engagements had little time for letters, so that he found her a most unpunctual correspondent, though he entreated her to write frequently to cheer his dull days passed by the bedside of his invalid father and trying to comfort his grieving mother.

But whenever the brevity or the carelessness of her later letters grieved him, he turned to the sweet, tender one written under the impetus of her resentment against Desha, and found solace in the words:

“Yes, I do love you—you need never doubt that. I look at your photograph often, and kiss it, too, as you do mine. I think that whenever you come back I will let you announce our engagement and set the wedding-day.”

Such promises were certainly enough to pin a lover’s faith to, and Florian did not doubt her after that; he only adored her more deeply, and longed for the time of return, chafing in secret most bitterly against the fate that kept him from her side.

So months passed away until the winter was over, and in March Mr. Gay’s long illness ended in death, and his son was free.

It was a blessed release from severe pain suffered long, and the loving ones who had watched by him so fondly were resigned to the affliction, because they knew he had entered into rest at last.