Lochinvar: A Novel

by S. R. Crockett

"Kate!" he cried, "I will not again ask you to forgive me; but if I do not come back, at least believe that I died more worthily than perhaps I have lived—though neither have I ever lived so as to shame you, even had you seen me at my worst. And, ere I go, give me at least a love-token that I may carry it with me till I die."

Kate's lips parted as though she had somewhat to answer if she would, but she kept a faintly smiling silence instead, and only looked casually about the room. A single worn glove lay on the top of a little cabinet of dark oak. She lifted it and handed it to Wat. The young man eagerly seized the glove, pressed it with quick passion to his lips, and then thrust it deep into the bosom of his military coat. He would have taken the hand which gave him the gift, but a certain malicious innocence in the girl's next words suddenly dammed his gratitude at the fountain-head.

"I have nothing of my own to give," she said, "for I have just newly come off the sea. But this glove of Maisie's will mayhap serve as well. Besides which, I heard her say yestreen that she had some time ago lost its marrow in the market-place of Amersfort."

"'I WILL TAKE MY OWN LOVE-TOKEN'"

With a fierce hand Wat Gordon tore the glove from his bosom and threw it impulsively out of the window into the canal. Then he squared his shoulders and turned him about in order to stride haughtily and indignantly from the room.

But even as he went he saw a quaintly subtle amusement shining in the girl's eyes—laughter made lovely by the possibility of indignant tears behind it, and on her perfectest lips that quick petulant pout which had seemed so adorable to him in the old days when he had laid so many ingenious snares to bring it out. Wat was intensely piqued—more piqued perhaps than angry. He who had wooed great ladies, and on whom in the ante-chambers of kings kind damsels all too beautiful had smiled till princes waxed jealous, was now made a mock of by a slim she-slip compact of mischievous devices. He looked again and yet more keenly at the girl by the window. Certainly it was so. Mischief lurked quaintly but unmistakably under the demure, upward curl of those eyelashes. A kind of still, calm fury took him, a set desperation like that of battle.

"I will take my own love-token," he cried, striding suddenly over to her.

And so, almost but not quite, ere Kate was aware, he had stooped and kissed her.

Then, in an instant, as soon indeed as he had realized his deed, all his courage went from him. His triumph of a moment became at once flat despair, and he stood before her ashamed, abject as a dog that is caught in a fault and trembles for the lash.