Her delicate sense of honor amused him; he lay back in his arm-chair, enjoying his cigar.
“It is curious,” he said, “that you cannot recall meeting Mr. Crawford last winter.”
“A girl has an opportunity to forget hundreds of faces after her first season,” she said.
There was another pause; then Garcide went on: “I am going to ask you to marry him.”
Her face paled a trifle; she bent her head in acquiescence. Garcide smiled. It had always been that way with the Castles. Their word, once given, ended all matters. And now Garcide was gratified to learn the value of a promise made by a child of ten.
“I wonder,” said Garcide, plaintively, “why you never open your heart to me, Hilda?”
“I wonder, too,” she said; “my father did.”
Garcide turned his flushed face to the window.
Years before, when the firm of Garcide & Castle went to pieces, Peter Castle stood by the wreck to the end, patching it with his last dollar. But the wreck broke up, and he drifted piteously with the débris until a kindly current carried him into the last harbor of all—the port of human derelicts.
Garcide, however, contrived to cling to some valuable flotsam and paddle into calm water, and anchor.