"Otherwise, what?" breathed Everett, bending toward her.
"I--I shall have to postpone them." Her voice had strengthened as she spoke, and the last statement was clear and ringing.
"Oh, you couldn't, Ann! Because I take a perfectly legitimate case, which comes into our office, you propose to postpone our marriage?"
"But, Everett, think of what you are doing! It is as if you had taken my brother by the throat. You were the first one to suggest that he might love the girl. What if he does?"
"We will not talk of Horace, please." Everett turned from her as he spoke. "You and I are the parties interested. If you will aid me, and you should, seeing that you love me, your brother need not be considered."
Ann rose, shuddering.
"You do not mean, Everett, that you wish to gain my consent that Fledra and Floyd should go back to Ithaca?"
Brimbecomb also rose.
"Fledra and Floyd!" he mimicked smilingly. "What a farce it all is! And how foolish to give them such names! I should think the governor and his wife would feel complimented that those kids were called for them! They are but paupers, after all!"
"Everett," stammered Ann, "am I just beginning to know you? Oh, you can't mean it! You're but jesting with me, aren't you, Dear?" Her love for him impelled her forward, and her slender hands fell upon his shoulders. He slipped them off, and gathered her fingers into his.
"Ann," he said earnestly, "I'm not jesting, and I ask you, by your love for me, to aid me in this, the first thing of importance I have ever asked you."
Miss Shellington drew reluctantly away.
"I can't, I can't! My very soul revolts at the idea." Then, gaining strength of voice, the girl, marble-white, exclaimed, "If you're not jesting, and are still determined to follow out your plans," she caught her breath in a sob and whispered, "then, like my brother, I shall have to ask you to leave, please."
A frown darkened Everett's face, followed by an expression of ridicule.
"Is this your love for me? You would let two strange squatter children come between us? Am I to understand it so?"
"You may understand this: that, after knowing that their father is wicked, that he would have sacrificed his daughter to a vile man, without marriage to lessen her suffering, after knowing that he tried to make a thief of his noble-hearted boy,--I say, after knowing all this, if you can still insist upon helping him, then I would not dare--to trust--my life with you!"