“Isn’t he? A knight, a brother—one in a million!”
“Well, Dick,” went on Mrs. March after her first flush of pleasure and surprise, “I can’t tell you how I rejoice with you in this great good fortune; but truly, dearest friend, our love can never be more than that of two tried old friends who have known each other always. So be good.”
“Only one thing can ever make me believe that love like mine will be denied,” replied Travers with great intensity; “I shall press my sacred claim, Dorothy, until you tell me that there is another whom you love.”
Mrs. March waited in evident distress for a few moments, and then, speaking very low and painfully:
“Poor old Dick, it hurts me terribly to wound you—but, Dick, there is another. I am not free.”
“Good God!” leaped from the man’s lips as he started forward with the iron entering his soul. “Mrs. March—with all my heart I beg you to forget me and my mad words of this day. I—I—I— Good-bye!”
“God bless you!” she murmured, crushed by his suffering. “And, Dick, of course I have told you this in confidence.”
“Certainly,” he answered, raising his hat and moving toward the house. At the window of the library he stopped, and then came slowly back to where she stood thinking. “Tell me one thing more. Dorothy, it is not this clown Allyne, is it?”
Mrs. March thanked him with her eyes for this bit of humor, which she knew must have cost him much, and exclaimed, with an effort to meet his own pleasantry: “Heavens! No!”