Presently Maurice spoke,--very faintly, but Mrs. Butts dropped a stitch at the first word, and her knitting fell into her lap as she listened to what followed.
“No! you must not leave me. You must never leave me. You saved my life. But you have done more than that,--more than you know or can ever know. To you I owe it that I am living; with you I live henceforth, if I am to live at all. All I am, all I hope,--will you take this poor offering from one who owes you everything, whose lips never touched those of woman or breathed a word of love before you?”
What could Euthymia reply to this question, uttered with all the depth of a passion which had never before found expression.
Not one syllable of answer did listening Mrs. Butts overhear. But she told her husband afterwards that there was nothing in the tableaux they had had in September to compare with what she then saw. It was indeed a pleasing picture which those two young heads presented as Euthymia gave her inarticulate but infinitely expressive answer to the question of Maurice Kirkwood. The good-hearted woman thought it time to leave the young people. Down went the stocking with the needles in it; out of her lap tumbled the ball of worsted, rolling along the floor with its yarn trailing after it, like some village matron who goes about circulating from hearth to hearth, leaving all along her track the story of the new engagement or of the arrival of the last “little stranger.”
Not many suns had set before it was told all through Arrowhead Village that Maurice Kirkwood was the accepted lover of Euthymia Tower.
MISS LURIDA VINCENT TO MRS. EUTHYMIA KIRKWOOD. ARROWHEAD VILLAGE, May 18.
MY DEAREST EUTHYMIA,--Who would have thought, when you broke your oar as the Atalanta flashed by the Algonquin, last June, that before the roses came again you would find yourself the wife of a fine scholar and grand gentleman, and the head of a household such as that of which you are the mistress? You must not forget your old Arrowhead Village friends. What am I saying?---you forget them! No, dearest, I know your heart too well for that! You are not one of those who lay aside their old friendships as they do last years bonnet when they get a new one. You have told me all about yourself and your happiness, and now you want me to tell you about myself and what is going on in our little place.