“If I should give you more time—” he began.
“No, no,” she interrupted him, anxious to take herself at full tide, and feeling for him that delay would be a pain she need not inflict. “I think we know one another.” She went up to him and frankly put her hand in his. “A partnership for life,” she said slowly.
His eyes had a suspicion of mistiness in them as he answered earnestly: “God help me to make it prosperous for you.”
Her face flushed. “And for you.”
Then as he kissed her, drawing her head gently to him, a new train of feelings rushed over her; an intimation of other sides to this affair; of personal, emotional considerations she had never suspected. She looked at him wonderingly, amazed, uncertain. He kissed her again.
Mrs. Anthon appeared just then, quite breathless over the excitement of Wilbur’s sudden arrival.
“Mother,” Miss Anthon said quickly, “I have promised to marry Mr. Wilbur.”
“Well,” Mrs. Anthon gasped, “well, Ady, you might have done worse, and you have been so curious of late in your goings-on I didn’t know just how you would end.” With that she relapsed into sentiment and tears over losing her only daughter.
“But, mamma,” Miss Anthon interposed maliciously, “this is what you have been planning for months, plotting with Uncle Seb and Mrs. Dexter. You ought to have known your own mind.”
“Whatever I have done, Adela,” Mrs. Anthon summoned her dignity, “I have done it always for your true happiness; some day when you have a daughter, you will understand how many sacrifices a mother makes!”