"I am wondering how it would have been with us if Mr. Heatherford had never lost his millions," said the young man reflectively.
"Clifford!" cried Mollie, in a tone of reproach, "you know I should have loved you just the same; but I am glad that I am poor, for I am awfully afraid if I had not been, you would have been too proud to tell me what you have told me to-night."
"Suppose such had been the case?" he smilingly questioned.
"I--I think I should have made you confess it somehow," she replied with an imperative little tap of her foot, "or"--with a gleam of mischief in her happy eyes, "I might have unsexed myself and proposed to you--oh! I am afraid I almost did as it is," she concluded, flushing again rosily as she thought of the rosebuds.
He laughed joyously and caught her to him again; then, bending his handsome head, he kissed her softly, reverently on her lips.
"I shall never wear anything but the red moss-rose after this," he said, "and now after you have fastened them in for me, we must go, or we shall be late for the opera. And I nearly forget, dear--I have tickets for to-morrow night to see Willard in the 'Professor's Love-story.'"
"Aren't you getting dissipated, Cliff?" questioned Mollie chidingly.
Mollie took the rosebuds daintily in her white-gloved fingers, shot a sly glance up at him as she kissed them, then slipped them deftly into the buttonhole and fastened them there.
"Yes. Willard is fine," she said, "but I'm afraid that I am not quite so deeply interested in the 'Professor's Love-story' just at present as I am in my own."
"My darling!" said Faxon in a voice that was tremulous with his new, great happiness as he pressed his lips upon her white forehead. Then he lifted a beautiful opera-cloak that was hanging over a chair, and laid it over her shoulders.
It was made of white brocaded satin, trimmed with ermine, and her golden-crowned head, with the crescent of flashing diamonds rising out of its snowy whiteness, made him think of some rare and beautiful flower.
"My own, you look like a queen in your coronation-robe, and I feel like a king who has just been crowned," he fondly murmured as he fastened the silver clasp beneath her chin.
"You are a king, Cliff--my king," Mollie softly responded.