Dinner was over. Tom Drake and John Webb were chatting under the apple trees in the orchard, where Webb had placed a cider-press of a new design which was to be tried the next day. Mrs. Drake had retired to her room for a nap. Ann had gone to see a girl friend in the neighborhood, and Dolly was in the parlor reading the books Saunders had given her. Mostyn hesitated about joining her, but the temptation was too great to be withstood. She looked up from her book as he entered and smiled impulsively, then the smile died away and she fixed him with a steady stare of inquiry.
"Why, what has happened?" she faltered.
"Nothing particular," he said, as he took a seat near her and clasped his cold, nervous hands over his knee.
She shook her head slowly, her eyes still on him. "I know better," she half sighed. "I can see it all over you. At dinner I watched you. You look--look as you did the day you came. You have no idea how you improved, but you are getting back. Oh, I think I know!" she sighed again, and her pretty mouth drooped. "You are in trouble. Mr. Saunders has brought you bad news of business."
He saw a loophole of escape from an embarrassing situation, and in desperation he used it. "Things are always going crooked in a bank like ours," he said, avoiding her despondent stare. "Men in my business take risks, you know. Things run smoothly at times, and then --then they may not do so well."
"Oh, I'm so sorry," she faltered; "you were getting on beautifully. You--you seemed perfectly happy, too, and I hoped that--" Her voice trailed away in the still room, and he saw her breast under its thin covering rise and fall suddenly.
"Don't let it worry you," he said.
"How can I help it?" She put the books on the window-sill and raised her hand to her brow. "I know how to fight my own troubles, but yours are too big, too intricate, too far away. What--what are you going to do?"
He felt the need of further pretense. He looked down as he answered: "I shall have to take the first train in the morning, and--and--"
"Oh!" The simple ejaculation was so full of pain that it checked his tardy subterfuge. He rose to take her in his arms to soothe her, to pledge himself to her forever, but he only stood leaning against the window-frame, the puppet of a thousand warring forces. No, he would not touch her, he told himself; she was to be his wife--she was the sweetest, purest human flower that ever bloomed, and until he was freer from the grime of his past he would not insult her by further intimacy. So far he had not spoken to her of marriage, and he would not do so till he had a better right.