It was more than an hour before the rector returned to the library
where Preston Cheney awaited him. When the senator heard his
approaching step, he looked up, and was startled to see the pallor on
the young man's face. "You have something sad, something terrible to
tell me!" he cried. "What is it?"
The rector walked across the room several times, breathing deeply,
and with anguish written on his countenance. Then he took Senator
Cheney's hand and wrung it. "I have an embarrassing announcement to
make to you," he said. "It is something so surprising, so
unexpected, that I am completely unnerved."
"You alarm me, more and more," the senator answered. "What can be
the secret which my frail child has imparted to you that should so
distress you? Speak; it is my right to know."
The rector took another turn about the room, and then came and stood
facing Senator Cheney.
"Your daughter has conceived a strange passion for me," he said in a
low voice. "It is this which has caused her illness, and which she
says will cause her death, if I cannot return it."
"And you?" asked his listener after a moment's silence.
"I? Why, I have never thought of your daughter in any such manner,"
the young man replied. "I have never dreamed of loving her, or
winning her love."
"Then do not marry her," Preston Cheney said quietly. "Marriage
without love is unholy. Even to save life it is unpardonable."
The rector was silent, and walked the room with nervous steps. "I
must go home and think it all out," he said after a time. "Perhaps
Miss Cheney will find her grief less, now that she has imparted it to
me. I am alarmed at her condition, and I shall hope for an early
report from you regarding her."
The report was made twelve hours later. Miss Cheney was delirious,
and calling constantly for the rector. Her physician feared the
worst.
The rector came, and his presence at once soothed the girl's
delirium.
"History repeats itself," said Preston Cheney meditatively to
himself. "Alice is drawing this man into the net by her alarming
physical condition, as Mabel riveted the chains about me when her
mother died.
"But Alice really loves the rector, I think, and she is capable of a
much stronger passion than her mother ever felt; and the rector loves
no other woman at least, and so this marriage, if it takes place,
will not be so wholly wicked and unholy as mine was."