“Then, oh, Elsie, won’t you marry me? Won’t you, dearest? Set the date yourself,—you know I don’t care about that confounded money,—but give me your promise.”
“I suppose I may as well,” she said, slowly.
“Elsie, darling! do you mean it? You make me so happy. When, dearest, when?”
“I’m going to marry you, Fenn, in time to get the money, for Mother and Gerty’s sake. So, I’ll set the day before my birthday,—the twenty-ninth of June.”
“Darling! Oh, Elsie, I can hardly believe it.”
“Yes; I mean it. And, Fenn, as soon as the ceremony is over; and as soon as I have signed the necessary papers to leave the fortune to Mother and Gerty, with a good bit for Joe Allison,—I shall kill myself.”
CHAPTER XIII
THE EXPECTED LETTER
Fenn Whiting was not unversed in feminine ways. And, especially did he count himself familiar with the ways of Elsie Powell. And though the average woman would make a threat of killing herself as a melodramatic bluff, not so Elsie. Whiting knew, for a certainty, if she had made up her mind to such a desperate step, she would assuredly take it. No interference or hindrance could prevent her. She might be foiled in several attempts but she would succeed finally, if she had set her face that way. And she had. Further conversation only revealed the depth and steadfastness of her purpose. She was willing to die for her mother and sister but not to live for them.
“But, Elsie, darling,” Whiting urged, “I can’t marry you that way. You must choose some one else, then. Could you live with Allison?”
“No! I couldn’t live with any man except Kimball Webb. And I never will! But my people have hounded me about that money, until I can’t stand it another minute. I must marry before my birthday, in order that they may get it,—but I don’t have to live on after that!” The big brown eyes were wide with despair, and the suffering, hunted look on Elsie’s face went to Whiting’s heart.