The first sentences were almost meaningless, so strong was the feeling that she had no right to be reading it at all, but as she went on she forgot her scruples. It was evidently a reply to a letter from her lover in which he had spoken of the cloud that hung over his name, and it was a confession of her faith in him, girlish, sweet and tender. "I trust you, Robert," it said. "It is in you to do heedless things, to be reckless, if only because you are young and eager and strong; but it is not in you to be dishonourable; of this I am as certain as I am of anything in life. Some day the truth will be known and you will be cleared, but whether it is or no, I choose to walk beside you. I choose it gladly, happily. I write the words again, gladly, happily, Robert. Yours, Mary."
"Oh!" cried Margaret Elizabeth, lifting a glowing face, "I love Mary."
"She was brave and unselfish," said the Candy Man.
Margaret Elizabeth nodded. "Yes, that is one side of it. Still, you see, she was sure, and it was, as she says, a joy to cast in her lot with him. 'Gladly, happily.'" Her eyes shone. She gazed far away down the river. The wind blew little tendrils of bright hair across her cheek. "It must be so when you care very much," she went on.
"But," argued the Candy Man, "under the stress of very noble feeling people sometimes do foolish things, do they not?"
"But this was not. Do you think for a moment Mary ever regretted it? I see what you mean by the best of you. It is something to have such credentials." Margaret Elizabeth's gaze met the Candy Man's, and her eyes were deep as they had been on Christmas Eve, in the firelight.
Oh, Margaret Elizabeth, it is your own fault, for being so dear, so unworldly! Could you, can you, cast in your lot with an unknown Candy Man? He has no business to ask you. He did not mean to, but only to prepare the way. He knows he is no great catch, even from the point of view of a Little Red Chimney. These are not the precise words of the Candy Man, but something like them....
So absorbed was Margaret Elizabeth in the thought of Mary, she was a bit slow in taking in their meaning. She gave him one startled glance, and then looked down, as it happened, upon the shabby little book which lay on the step between them. Absently she drew it toward her, and with fingers that trembled, opened it, as if to find her answer in its pages. Then a smile began faintly to curl about her lips, and she read aloud from the book: