"You—you?" she exclaimed, starting violently. "Ah no! Don't destroy my ideals."
"This may be wholesome, but it is certainly not pleasant," he said, praying Heaven for patience.
There was nothing of her customary light spirit of bravado in the manner in which, after a pause, she next spoke to him.
"I hardly know how—for the sake of others, I mean, not on my own account—to ask if it is possible you have not, in connection with me, given a thought to one who was my daily, intimate companion all of last winter."
"That!" he interrupted, with a dry laugh. Why not arraign her for the wreck of me?"
"You understand me, I see," she said, with meaning. "Let me say this, then: that I hold a trifler with women's hearts to be the most despicable of characters. A man who is too indolent or too infirm of purpose to deny himself the pleasure he gets from watching his progress in a girl's affections is an offender the law mayn't reach, but he deserves it should. That he makes his victim old before her time, in his gradual, refined disappointment of her hopes, may not count for much, in your estimation. But—but—oh! I could not have believed it of the person who wrote those verses!"
There were tears in her honest eyes, a tremor in her young voice. Save for these, Vance, who had walked away from her a dozen steps, would have continued to put distance between himself and this "angel at the gate."
As it was, he controlled himself sufficiently to return and say, in a hard, strained voice:
"I shall not attempt to change your estimate of me. But I am glad you have given me an opportunity to tell you that on the day I saw you first, I went directly from my aunt's house to ask Katherine Ainger to be my wife. Some day, when you are older, and know more of the world, and take broader views of poor humanity, all these things may seem to you different. Then you may, perhaps, admit that, with all my faults, I could never be such a cad as you have pictured. In the little time that we are together now, please, let us say no more about it."
He walked away, joining the Colonel, to engage that unsuspecting gentleman in an exhaustive discussion of politics.