“Even if he possesses an independent fortune?”
“Yes,” she persisted, “I feel that, no matter how rich a man may be, he should have some definite object in life.”
“How about a woman?” queried Philip, with a mischievous glance into her thoughtful blue eyes.
“Oh, I intended to make no distinction. I should have said everybody,” the girl replied.
“Have you marked out your future career, Mollie?” inquired the young man in the same spirit as before. “I suppose you have been pursuing your studies during your absence.”
“Well, I have been doing some honest work in that line during the last four years,” she gravely returned; “but, as to my future, I have not quite made up my mind what I am best fitted for. I want to do something. I could teach elocution and rhetoric, both of which, you know, I have always enjoyed very much, and perhaps some other thing,” she added modestly.
“Such as what?” queried Phil, who was curious to learn in what she excelled.
“Oh, please do not make me particularize regarding my acquirements,” Mollie replied, the color coming again to her cheeks, “and, besides, you have not yet told me what you are going to do—are you going to study a profession?”
He wanted to tell her that the most definite object he had in view just then was to try to win the hand and heart which he had so long coveted, but he hardly dared venture that far so soon after her return.
There was a certain air about her that seemed to warn him against being too familiar or precipitate, or of assuming too much upon the ground of their early friendship; and, although all his old love revived and his pulse thrilled under the influence of her beauty and the tones of her magic voice, he resolved to approach her very carefully and delicately.