Mr. Barclay Dodge was happy; he had for more than two years followed Lily through all vicissitudes attendant upon the career of a young girl in society. From an exhilaration the pursuit had become a desperation. He had never suspected any man of being his rival, and accounted for the acquaintance between Lily and Osgood by believing that Lily was related to the Formica family. How she managed so suddenly to convince Barclay Dodge that it was safe for him to propose is a mystery which none but a disappointed, contrary woman may reveal. He had the usual penetration of his sex in regard to such mysteries; he was a man of sense and experience, but he was in love, and when a man is in love he only analyzes himself, and all that he learns is, that his love must be gratified.
In the whirl of his attentions, and the congratulations of her friends, the time passed quickly; not so quickly, however, as to avert the plan by which the Fates were to bring her to a knowledge of herself.
Barclay proposed an immediate marriage. Lily declined the proposal with so much vehemence that he dared not insist. He pulled his mustache in rage after he left her, and wondered why he did not insist. By what means, he cogitated, could he make her yield her will to his? Her resistance he set down to coyness; all women had freaks; they were alike in such matters. He divined after a while that she would let go the lasso at any moment if he proved restive; so he played the submissive to perfection. If she ever saw his eyes flame, or any gesture which contained a threat, he never knew it; but every revelation from him was a revelation to her of herself, and this was to be her education and her punishment.
“Where is your friend Osgood?” he asked once.
“He has been away a long time,” she answered, looking him full in the face, but with rather a stony expression in her eyes.
“He is your relative?”
“Oh no.”
“No? I thought so, always seeing you in the same places.”
“Our families have been acquainted always.”