"I never heard a more infamous proposal," I said in an aside to our hostess. She laughed. "No, did you—but she was only jesting——"
"Not she!" I was in no mood to tolerate jesting on the subject of Eleanor Leigh's marriage. My aside to our hostess drew the attention of the others to me, and Mrs. Arrow suddenly said, "Mr. Glave, which would you say? You know them both, don't you?"
"I do."
"Well, which would you say?"
"Neither," said I. I wanted to add that I would cheerfully murder them both before I would allow either of them to destroy Eleanor Leigh's life; but I contented myself with my brief reply.
"Oh! Mr. Glave is evidently one of her victims," laughed our hostess, for which I was grateful to her.
I came away from my friend's with the heroic determination to prevent Miss Leigh's life from being ruined and to accomplish this by the satisfactory method of capturing her myself. My resolve was a little dampened by reading in a newspaper next day the headlines announcing an "Important Engagement," which though no names were used pointed clearly at Miss Leigh and the hopeful heir and partner of Mr. James Canter, Sr. Reading carefully the article, I found that the engagement was only believed to exist. I felt like a reprieved criminal.
He who has not felt the pangs of a consuming passion has no conception of the true significance of life. The dull, cold, indifferent lover knows nothing of the half-ecstatic anguish of the true lover or the wholly divine joy of reconciliation even in anticipation. As well may the frozen pole dream of the sun-bathed tropic. It was this joy that I hugged in my heart even in face of the declaration of her expected engagement.
Next day I was talking to two or three young fellows when Canter and some episode in which he had figured as rather more defiant than usual of public opinion, came up, and one of them said to another, a friend of his and an acquaintance of mine, "What is Jim going to do when he gets married? He'll have to give up his 'friends' then. He can't be running two establishments."
"Oh! Jim ain't going to get married. He's just fooling around."