The evening before, Harvey, after leaving the house, had kissed Angeline's hand at the garden gate. It had been at this electrical moment that Mr. Turck looked out of the sitting-room window, instead of attending to his newspaper as he should have done, and noted the two forms showing dimly through the gathering shade. He did not distinctly see the kiss, but something in the movement was vaguely reminiscent to him. His suspicions were aroused. He had called harshly to Angeline to come in and go to her mother, and she had obeyed, while Harvey melted away into the summer night, after the manner of lovers who have attracted the paternal eye. Neither of the two was much disturbed. There was a glow in the heart of each, a glow too deep to be affected by an ominous word or two. Yet this episode had led to Mr. Turck's outbreak before his wife.
The first blow fell early. Before two more days had passed Mr. Turck had broken out at the breakfast table and had forbidden Angeline to have any further relations of any sort with Harvey Lowry. She must not speak to him. There were tears and quite a scene. Even the subdued Mrs. Turck ventured to say a word, and asked what Angeline could do when meeting Harvey on the street? To this only the curt reply was given that "a dignified bow" was enough. It was rather hard. The old gentleman did not know it, his meek wife did not suspect it, and Angeline would never have believed it, but the truth is, if Angeline's life had depended on the making of a dignified bow, it would have been short shrift for her. It must be regretfully admitted that in the village of Willow Bend the bow, as practiced by maids alike, was such a casual bob of the head as conveyed not the remotest conception of any dignity. It may have been a fact that this Arcadian bob was subject to modification among the elders, but that does not matter. The father, looking upon Angeline's meek face and recognizing the accustomed submission in his wife's eyes, felt that he had done a fit and becoming morning's work, and drank his coffee calmly, while Angeline trifled sadly with her spoon and looked dumbly out of the nearest window.
That evening Lowry called, and was told by the servant maid who met him at the door that he could not enter. The young man understood well enough that this was under Mr. Turck's direction, and went away less dispirited than he might have been. The next day Mrs. Turck, who feared to do otherwise, brought to the lord of the house a tinted piece of folded paper, which proved to be a letter from Harvey to the again suspiciously rosy Angeline. This dangerous piece of Love's fighting gear had been detected by Mrs. Turck's eagle eye among the trifles on her daughter's work table. A charge direct, tears, expostulations, confession, and the delivery of the missive over to the enemy had followed swiftly. The hair stood upon the paternal head in disapproval as Mr. Turck held the pink letter between his thumb and forefinger and read it stridently aloud. After all, there was little in it to excite either anger or apprehension, for it was only an expression of hope that the writer could see Angeline that evening at a little party at the home of a mutual friend, but, as with venomous insects, its sting was in its tail, for it was signed solely with these three letters: "I. L. Y."
Now, even Mr. Turck did not need to be told what the letters he described as "those infamous characters" signified. The world knows them. His wife, too, flushed when he showed them to her, and then, for once bridling a little at the "infamous," she reminded him that there was a time when Mr. Turck himself, as a matter of custom and daily habit, wrote those very characters at the end of all his letters; but, though for a moment embarrassed by this allusion, the husband only sniffed.
Angeline had a bad half hour over the "I. L. Y.," and the end was submission almost abject, for Mr. Turck would brook no half-way measures. The girl promised neither to write to nor read any letters from the young man so disapproved. In a sharp communication from Mr. Turck, Harvey Lowry was made to know the unpopularity of his epistolary efforts in the Turck household, and for a day or two apparently bowed his head to the paternal will. But who may comprehend the ways of a lover? One morning not a week after the "I. L. Y." affair, Mr. Turck saw another suspicious-looking envelope in the bundle of letters he carried home from the post-office at luncheon time. He looked hard at Angeline's face when she opened the letter at the table and noted there was an expression of confusion and surprise. Without a word, he stretched out an authoritative hand, and, without a word, Angeline gave him the small, open sheet of heavy cream colored paper. This is what he saw, drawn with pen and ink, on the fair page:
Only that and nothing more.
It was now that Angeline's persecutions began in earnest. She was questioned, and threatened, and bullied, and coaxed, but she would not tell the meaning of those four lines drawn upon that virgin page, and sent to her in an envelope addressed in the handwriting of Harvey Lowry. In truth, the poor girl did not know, and could not guess, what the thing meant, herself. Denial tears, supplication—all were of no avail. Mr. Turck would not believe his daughter. He held the drawing upside down, sideways, and then almost horizontal, as one does in reading where the letters are purposely made tall and thin, but he could make nothing of it, and raged the more at his incompetence. "It looks a little like a side plan of a room," he muttered to himself, "but it isn't complete. Have the fools arranged to run away and are they planning a house already?" The idea was too much for him. He seized his hat and went forth for advice.
Mr. Turck was in the office of Baldison, a contractor and builder, within five minutes. "Here, Baldison," he bellowed as he came in, "what is this? Is it part of a plan of a house, or, if not, what is it?"
Mr. Baldison was a cautious man, and, taking the paper, he examined the connected lines long and deliberately. His comment, when he made it, was not entirely satisfying.