“I cannot doubt your sincerity,” replied Vance, “but I am glad to have more faith than you have.”
“Why should I have any faith,” she replied. “Have I not seen my father clinging to that false hope year after year, and every day resulting in a fresh disappointment? Long ago I made up my mind that Aunt Sally is about right. She says that father has been planting money with different prospectors all over the mountains, and none of it has ever found its way back. She also predicts that father will work away on Gray Rocks until he dies, and never have his hopes realized. I love my father tenderly, and feel very sorry for him. A stranger cannot understand his personal charms and grandeur as one of his family. He is certainly one of the sweetest characters in the world. His persuasive powers, as you evidently have reason to know, are very great, and I feel it my duty to thus warn you for your own protection. Papa is so sane on everything else excepting Gray Rocks, and is so foolish about that, notwithstanding his many years of lost labor.”
“If your father has a ‘wheel in his head’ on the subject of Gray Rocks, I must admit that I, too, have one in mine,” replied Vance.
The blush that overspread Virginia’s face suggested that she felt keenly the rebuke.
“Pardon me, Mr. Gilder,” said she, “I had forgotten that I am not ‘my brother’s keeper’. I promise never to refer to the subject again.”
That evening, after Vance had taken leave of Miss Virginia Bonifield, he experienced a strange unrest and dissatisfaction, and while he did not admit it to himself, the glamour of his day-dreams had been broken.
Presently, as he walked along, the face of Louise came before him, and, in a moment, he forgot his unsatisfactory evening; forgot hope’s broken glamour, and basked again in the alluring belief that the future held no clouds for him.