“I understand!” she whispered with self-accusing timidity, and now strangely fearful of her own judgment, her heart leaping up in defense of the absent man. “It would be too cruel! I dare not, and yet how will he ever know?” Dan Cupid, from rosy clouds, smiled roguishly upon her slumbers that night.
The brooding peace of Lakemere was left undisturbed by the lively heiress and Miss Sara Conyers, who had managed to have “sudden business” in the city during the formal visit of Senator Alynton.
And so there was no one to see the proud man go forth with a man’s saddest burden in his heart. She loved another!
No one of the obsequious attendants saw a graver shade than ordinary settle down upon the face of the statesman when he turned his stately head at the park gates in a last adieu to the graceful woman who stood with her earnest eyes following his departing form.
“God bless her now and always!” the saddened suitor murmured, even in his heart’s sorrow.
The noble simplicity of Alynton’s tender of his hand, the tribute laid at her feet of a choice between the honors of the Cabinet and a foreign place of splendid precedence—the manly words in which he told her of his grave solicitude for her happiness, and the real reasons for his past reticence, all had touched her heart with a womanly pride in this man’s honest love.
“I could not tell him the whole truth, for the child’s sake; and, less than the whole truth, would be an outrage to his faith and a blot upon my womanhood.”
Judge Endicott now followed her with mute accusing eyes, for he feared the ruin of his hopes.
It was a week before Romaine Garland’s head sought her friend’s bosom.
“Sara,” she whispered, “do you know that we sail next week? Your brother must come and say adieu, for it is more than she can bear. I have a secret to tell you. I need your help. I need his friendship. Only Hugh can help me with my mother, for this parting from Noel is almost death to me. She must know the truth, but how?”