"Yes," she quietly returned, but with downcast eyes, and a tender inflection unconsciously creeping into her tones, "I am going to marry Mr. Faxon the 25th of January."
The ax had fallen! The man whom he had hated for years had won the prize which he coveted. He could have borne it better if she had named some stranger, but to be told that his old enemy, who, in spite of every adverse circumstance, had gone straight to the front, distancing him in college; who had proved himself a hero over and over; to whom he owed the life of his young sister; against whom he had once lifted a murderous hand, and who was now rapidly rising, both in the social and political world. Oh! it was too much; it was crushing, maddening!
He stood rigid as a statue for a full minute after Mollie concluded, trying to master the tempest of jealous hate that raged within him. Then he said in a voice that was ominous in its calmness:
"And you love him?"
Mollie flashed him a glance that answered him even before she spoke, for there was a light of ineffable happiness in her eyes.
"You do not need to ask such a question!" she replied, "you know that I would never give my hand to any man who had not first won my deepest affection."
"Enough!" cried Philip, now wrought up to uncontrollable fury, "you need say no more. So that low-born upstart has effectually cut me out; curse him! Bah! I could cut his heart out!"
"Stop!" commanded Mollie, facing him with an air and look that silenced him for the moment. "If you must give expression to such ignoble sentiments regarding one who is vastly your superior in every respect, you at least shall not offend my ears with such language."
She turned abruptly as she ceased, and swept down the marble walk with the hauteur of an offended queen, and a moment later disappeared within the mansion.
Philip Wentworth, left to himself, paced back and forth in the flower-bordered path with the restless step of a caged lion, while he muttered and swore and raved like one almost on the verge of insanity, and wholly unaware of the slender, white-clad figure which had a few minutes previous flitted down another path and suddenly halted behind a huge Japanese vase taller than herself, and in which there was growing a luxuriant mass of vines, which entirely concealed her from view.