“And yet papa trusted him,” said Allison musingly.
“Surely, Allison, you do not think I doctored those books? You cannot believe that I would be guilty of defrauding your father after all his kindness to me?” he cried, in a wounded tone.
“Oh, no! I did not mean to imply that, Gerald,” she returned earnestly. “I would not have hurt you like that for all the world! No, indeed, Gerald, if all the world said you were guilty, I would never have believed it.”
“Could you have trusted me to such an extent, Allison?” he breathed, bending to look into her eyes, his face lighting with sudden joy.
“You know I could—nothing could ever make me lose faith in you. What I did mean, when I said that papa trusted Mr. Hubbard, was, it seemed strange to me that so shrewd a business man as my father was should have been so deceived in any one.”
“Allison, I do not believe that he was deceived; I imagine he knew he was not to be trusted implicitly,” said Gerald thoughtfully. “I used to fear, sometimes, that John Hubbard had managed to draw Mr. Brewster into some transactions that were beginning to complicate his business, and so made it necessary for him to retain the man.”
“Oh, I hate him with all my heart!” Allison suddenly burst forth, with startling vehemence; “and, Gerald, I am going to tell you something—I must tell somebody: that man asked me the other day to—don’t look at me so, please,” she interposed, averting her scarlet face—“he asked me to marry him.”
“Allison!” exclaimed Gerald, in breathless astonishment, and turning deathly pale; “has he dared—has he presumed upon the position he occupies toward you to do such a thing? Oh, he is a bigger rascal than I thought him. Allison, you will not let him either coax or force you to ruin your life in that way.”
“Why, of course not—I told him I couldn’t marry him; you know I could not, Gerald,” the ingenuous girl replied, and involuntarily moving a little nearer his companion, with a confiding air that thrilled him with joy, and yet what she had told him made him very uneasy.
“I cannot understand why papa should have given him authority over me for so many years,” she said.