Gordon Keith

by Thomas Nelson Page

Wickersham began to renew his visits to Mrs. Wentworth, which he had discontinued for a time when he had found himself repulsed. The repulse had stimulated his desire to win her; but he had a further motive. Among other things, she might ask for an accounting of the money he had had of her, and he wanted more money. He must keep up appearances, or others might pounce upon him.

When he began again, it was on a new line. He appealed to her sympathy. If he had forgotten himself so far as to ask for more than friendship, she would, he hoped, forgive him. She could not find a truer friend. He would never offend her so again; but he must have her friendship, or he might do something desperate.

Fortunately for him, Wickersham had a good advocate at court. Mrs. Wentworth was very lonely and unhappy just then, and the plea prevailed. She forgave him, and Wickersham again began to be a visitor at the house.

But deeper than these lay another motive. While following Mrs. Wentworth he had been thrown with Lois Huntington. Her freshness, her beauty, the charm of her girlish figure, the unaffected gayety of her spirits, attracted him, and he had paused in his other pursuit to captivate her, as he might have stepped aside to pluck a flower beside the way. To his astonishment, she declined the honor; more, she laughed at him. It teased him to find himself balked by a mere country girl, and from this moment he looked on her with new eyes. The unexpected revelation of a deeper nature than most he had known astonished him. Since their interview on the street Lois received him with more friendliness than she had hitherto shown him. In fact, the house was a sad one these days, and any diversion was welcome. The discontinuance of Keith's visits had been so sudden that Lois had felt it all the more. She had no idea of the reason, and set it down to the score of his rumored success with Mrs. Lancaster. She, too, could play the game of pique, and she did it well. She accordingly showed Wickersham more favor than she had ever shown him before. While, therefore, he kept up his visits to Mrs. Norman, he was playing all the time his other game with her cousin, knowing the world well enough to be sure that it would not believe his attentions to the latter had any serious object. In this he was not mistaken. The buzz that coupled his name with Mrs. Wentworth's was soon as loud as ever.

Finally Lois decided to take matters in her own hands. She would appeal to Mr. Wickersham himself. He had talked to her of late in a manner quite different from the sneering cynicism which he aired when she first met him. In fact, no one could hold higher sentiments than he had expressed about women or about life. Mr. Keith himself had never held loftier ideals than Mr. Wickersham had declared to her. She began to think that the tittle-tattle that she got bits of whenever she saw Mrs. Nailor or some others was, perhaps, after all, slander, and that Mr. Wickersham was not aware of the injury he was doing Mrs. Wentworth. She would appeal to his better nature. She lay in wait several times without being able to meet him in a way that would not attract attention. At length she wrote him a note, asking him to meet her on the street, as she wished to speak to him privately.

When Wickersham met her that afternoon at the point she had designated, not far from the Park, he had a curious expression on his cold face.

She was dressed in a perfectly simple, dark street costume which fitted without a wrinkle her willowy figure, and a big black hat with a single large feather shaded her face and lent a shadow to her eyes which gave them an added witchery. Wickersham thought he had never known her so pretty or so chic. He had not seen as handsome a figure that day, and he had sat at the club window and scanned the avenue with an eye for fine figures.

She held out her hand in the friendliest way, and looking into his eyes quite frankly, said, with the most natural of voices:

"Well, I know you think I have gone crazy, and are consumed with curiosity to know what I wanted with you?"

"I don't know about the curiosity," he said, smiling at her. "Suppose we call it interest. You don't have to be told now that I shall be only too delighted if I am fortunate enough to be of any service to you." He bent down and looked so deep into her eyes that she drew a little back.