To Gertrude Athol the companionship of Philip Wentworth evidently meant a great deal, if one could judge from the coming and going of her color, the tender light within her eyes whenever they met those of the young man, and the shy, happy smiles that hovered about her mouth.
The story which they were reading, and pausing every now and then to discuss, had for its heroine a young girl who had been sent into the country one summer to recuperate after a long illness, and while there had met a young man of the world, who, after becoming acquainted with her, monopolized her time, and made love to her in an indefinite kind of way, yet never committing himself beyond a certain point. He completely won the girl’s heart, and she poured out all the wealth of her nature upon this suppositious lover, only to awake from her blissful dream at the end of the season, when he came to bid her a stereotyped farewell, and then drifted out of her life forever. The blow was more than the girl could bear in her delicate state of health, while the shame she experienced upon realizing that she had been systematically fooled, just for the amusement of an idler, who found no better entertainment at hand, almost turned her brain. She could not rally from it, and quietly folding her hands in submission to the inevitable she drooped and died before the year was out.
“Oh, what a sad, sad story!” Gertrude exclaimed, when Philip reached this point, and her red lips quivered in sympathy with the unfortunate girl; “and what a wicked thing it was for Gerald Frost to do! It is heartless for any man to play with a woman’s affections in any such way.”
“It was simply a summer idyl,” replied Philip, lifting his eyes from the book and feasting them upon his companion’s beauty, “and there are thousands of such incidents occurring every year.”
“But it is atrocious—it is a crime!” retorted the girl spiritedly, “and a man who will deliberately set himself at work to do such a deed is at heart as bad as a murderer.”
“Oh, Gertrude! Miss Athol! your language is very severe,” laughed Philip.
“Yes, it sounds harsh, but it is true, all the same,” she persisted, “and if Gerald Frost is a fair type of the summer male flirt, too much cannot be said in condemnation of him.”
“And what about the summer girl flirt?” questioned her companion laughingly.
“She is even worse, for one expects sincerity and sympathy from a woman, and she shames and degrades her sex when she descends to such ignoble pastime,” she gravely returned. “At the same time, a man has the advantage over a woman in such a case, for it rests with him to put the all-important question, and it is inhuman to win a young girl’s heart, and then cast it from him as worthless. I am glad to think, however, that there are comparatively few Amy Linders in the world. I would never have finished the book like that—I think the author has spoiled it.”