A month passed by, and October, in glorious tints of autumnal beauty, shed its light over the city. In a handsome drawing-room on Brooklyn Heights sat Weldon Gardner and Lina Dent. The young girl wore a soft white dress, and her figure was replete with roseate health and beauty.
The young physician was pleading strongly and earnestly, gazing into the eloquent eyes before him as if his very life hung upon their favor.
"But I know so little of you, Dr. Gardner," was her remonstrance in answer to his ardent suit, "true you have earned my life-long gratitude--"
"Don't mention that, if you have any regard for me," he interrupted, in a sort of disdain.
"Yes," she urged, "I must mention it. To you I owe my life, and perhaps, my reason. Of course I know you in all points of family, position, and professional success; but your own true self--how can I know that you will secure my happiness? Is there nothing you can tell me of yourself which will reassure me?"
And the bright, honest look of her eyes robbed her plain words all possible sting.
"First, tell me that you love me," he argued, "let me know that it would be sweet to you to place your happiness in my keeping. At least you can do this. You know if you love me."
"And if I confess that I love you," she said at length, in a low voice; "if I do this, would it not be mockery to learn, when too late, that I had made a mistake?"
"But, in heaven's name, Lina, what can you mean? Why do you doubt me? What is there to tell? I could have no secrets--"
Then there rushed to his memory with a force that sent the blood to his brow and almost took his breath, the conviction that he _had_ a secret from her--that he _was_ deceiving her--that it was unmanly to seek her love with a lie on his lips. For a brief season his engagement had been forgotten, or ignored. He had hugged to his breast with unreasoning apathy the theory that the present was enough to consider--that the future must care for itself--that once his promised wife, Lina Dent should be his if all the world conspired against it. But now came the hated thought that Evelyn Howard stood between him and the precious one who had been his day-star since the night when he had nursed her back to life.