“Phil!” gasped Mrs. Temple again, and growing pale herself at his strange mood. “Are you really so far gone as that? I believe I shall insist upon your going away, for I never will consent to let you marry a beggar, though I’ll own I’m very fond of Mollie myself, and should be proud of her as a daughter if she only had money enough to sustain the style she has always been accustomed to. Where is your pride, Philip Wentworth, that you are willing to spoil your whole life?”
If she could but have known it, she was missing the grandest, most precious opportunity of her life, for the scales that held her son’s future in the balance were on the point of tipping toward a better and nobler manhood, and had she wisely and tenderly dropped a few words of sympathy and encouragement into the love-laden heart laid bare before her, she might have wrought a marvelous change, and saved both herself and him much suffering and remorse.
But those last, arrogant words did their work. The young man sprang to his feet and shook himself as if just awakening from a dream.
“Never you fear, mother,” he said, with a careless toss of his head, “the Wentworth name shall never suffer in that way through any fault of mine. I reckon I can look out for myself; but I’m not going away—the Heatherfords would think it very strange, and I have a curiosity to see how the old gentleman’s venture turns out—if he should make a corner, why, I should be on hand to improve my opportunity.”
Mrs. Temple was not quite satisfied that he could “look out for himself” in the way she desired; but she felt that she had said enough for the present, and so allowed the matter to drop.
A day or two later there came a drenching rain, when, of course, there could be no excursion or sightseeing, and everybody was shut within doors; at least, after luncheon no one ventured out.
Mr. Temple and Mr. Heatherford were playing billiards up-stairs, and Mrs. Temple was in her own room reading to Minnie, who had been indisposed for a day or two.
Mollie and Phil were alone in the library, where, for a time, they amused themselves by looking over a collection of views and photographs, among which were many of Phil’s classmates and college friends. While they were thus engaged one of the programs of the recent commencement exercises at Harvard was found among them. Mollie picked it up and began to look it over.
At first Phil did not notice what she had, for he was searching for the likeness of a friend of whom they had been talking, and which he wished her to see. He found it at last, and turned to her with the picture in his hand, when, as he caught sight of the program, his heart gave a great, startled bound, and he grew cold as ice.
He knew that if Mollie should look it carefully through she would find Clifford Faxon’s name there, learn that he had been a classmate of his, how he had distinguished himself, and, worse than all, how he—Phil—had wilfully concealed these facts from her.