Max Van Duren was accepted on probation as a suitor for the hand of Miss Byrne.
Everything now depended on Miriam's ability to carry out the programme laid down for her by her father. The task thus set before her was repugnant to her feelings in many ways, and yet there was a strange sort of fascination in the thought that she alone had power enough over this man to draw from him a secret that he would reveal to no living soul else. But it was requisite that even she should go to work very carefully in the matter. It was requisite that not the slightest suspicion as to her motives should be aroused in Van Duren's naturally suspicious mind. Time and patience were essentially necessary. To have seemed anxious, or in a hurry, would have defeated everything.
Thus it fell out that, nearly every evening when he was in town, Max Van Duren was admitted for an hour to the society of the woman to whose love-spells he had fallen so easy a victim. It could have been no greater surprise to any one than it was to himself to find such toils woven so strongly about him--to find himself, at fifty years of age, and with all his hard worldly experience, as weak as any school boy before the foolish witchery of a pretty face.
Every day his infatuation, for it was nothing less, seemed to grow stronger. While coquetting with him, and leading him on to believe that she really did care a little for him in her heart, she was careful to restrain all lover-like familiarities within the smallest possible limits. She could not prevent his pressing her hand now and then, and she even schooled herself into letting him once and again, and as an immense favour, touch the tips of her fingers with his lips. But that was all. Never once was his arm allowed to insinuate itself round her waist. Never once would she sit alone in the room with him for even five minutes. Her father, infirm and deaf as he was, or appeared to be, was always there--a power to be appealed to should the necessity for such an appeal ever arise.
Van Duren growled a little occasionally at being so persistently forced to keep his distance; but Miriam was as obdurate as a flint.
"I don't believe you have a heart!" he said to her, rather savagely, one night, after she had refused to let him kiss even the tips of her fingers.
"I thought you told me only ten minutes ago that I was the happy possessor of yours," she said, demurely.
"Pshaw! You know well enough what I mean. In any case, you can't be possessed of much feeling."
"I pricked my finger this morning, and it seemed to me that my feelings were very acute indeed. But doubtless you know best."
"I wonder whether you have anything beyond the very vaguest idea of what it is to love."