I hope I shall be understood when I say that Bud wrote the greater part of the minister's sermon that week; though he of course, was utterly unconscious of the fact.
CHAPTER XXI.
ONE OF THE VICTIMS.
MEANTIME there were other interests at stake that winter than those involved in the renovation of the old church. For instance, there was Harry Matthews, who kept Claire's heart constantly filled with anxious thought.
It became more and more apparent that he was in great and growing danger. Claire saw much of him. He had been one of the most faithful helpers during the preparations for the concert, and he was still one of the energetic workers, being included in all their plans. Moreover, he was a genial, society-loving, warm-hearted young fellow; one of the sort with whom a sympathetic girl soon becomes intimate. Claire had often, in the earlier days of her girlhood, sighed over the fact that she had no brother; and now it seemed sometimes to her as if this Harry were a sort of brother, over whose interests she must watch. So she exercised an older sister's privilege in growing very anxious about him.
Neither was he so gayly happy as he had been early in the season. He had kept his pledge, coming to her at first with laughing eyes and mock gravity of face, pretending to making confession like the good little boy in the story book, who is sorry, and won't do so any more if he can help it. She always received these admissions with a gentle gravity, so unmistakably tinged with sadness and disappointment, that they presently ceased to be amusing to him. He was beginning to make discoveries: first, that it was by no means an agreeable thing for a manly young man to seek a young woman whom he respected, and voluntarily admit that he had again been guilty of what he knew she looked upon with distrust, not only, but with actual dismay; and second that he had the confession to make much more frequently than he had supposed could possibly be the case; that, in short, the habit which he had supposed such a light one, was growing upon him; that on occasions when he withstood the invitations and temptations, the struggle was a hard one, which he shrank from renewing. Still he made resolves. It was absurd to suppose that he could keep running after Miss Benedict, or sending her notes to say that he had again indulged in a habit that he had assured her was of no consequence, and that he could break in a day if he chose. He knew now that this was folly. It was not to be broken in a day. He began to suspect that possibly he was a slave, with little or no power to break it at all. The tenor of his notes changed steadily. The first one ran thus:
"I have to inform your most gracious majesty that I have this day committed the indiscretion of taking about two thirds of a glass of champagne with an old school chum whom I have not seen for six months. It is another chapter of the old story—he 'beguiled me and I did' drink. Of course it was no fault of mine; and it gives me comfort to inform you that the tempter has gone on his way to Chicago, and that I do not expect to see him for another six months. So humbly craving your majesty's pardon for being thus obliged to trouble her—owing to a certain foolish pledge of mine—I remain your humble subject.
"Harry Matthews."
The last one she received was briefly this:
"Miss Benedict:—I have failed again, though I did not mean to do so. I beg you will erase my name from that page, and care nothing more about it or me."