“Just as things have panned out all right for Devonhough.”
What did that mean? Her throbbing, panting, bursting heart knew only too well. Clara had come to a decision—she would marry Jerome, and not the Honorable Archibald.
Rube had scarcely ceased to speak when Mell raised her head.
“Rube!”
Very soft that call!
Unheeding, Rube still looked out of the window and into the past. That day at the picnic—that beautiful day, that day of days; a pure, white, luminous spot in memory’s galaxy of fair and heavenly things—that day she had not felt as she had made him think she felt; hence, he had been a cat’s-paw, a puppet; and she—oh, it could not be that Mell was a dissembler, a hypocrite, a serpent!
“Rube!”
A little louder was this call.
He turned, he obeyed—no more able to resist the beckoning hand, the dulcet voice, the luring glance, than you or I the spells of our own individual Sirens and Circes.