FullReads

He did not seem able to go on immediately, but just looked at her. “Eleanore,” he said, “I have been a fool, all sorts of a fool. I came over here to go back again at once, and I am going back, but not alone. I have been alone too long. I had begun to fancy there was only one woman in the world until I came back, and then–something some man said proved to me there was another one, and that she was the only one, and that I–had come near losing her. I had tried to forget about her. I had tried to harden myself to her by thinking she had been hard to me. I said–she does not care for you as the woman you love must care for you, but it doesn’t matter now whether she cares or not, for I love her so. I want her to come to me and scold me again, and tell me how unworthy I am, and make me good and true like herself, and happy. The rest doesn’t count without her, it means nothing to me unless she takes it and keeps it in trust for me, and shares it with me.” He had both her hands now, and was pressing them against the flowers in the breast of the long coat.

“Eleanore,” he said, “I tried to tell you once of the one thing that would bring me back and you stopped me. Will you stop me now?”

She tried to look up at him, but she would not let him see the happiness in her face just then, and lowered it and gently said, “No, no.”

It must have taken him a long time to tell it, for after he had driven them twice around the Park the driver of the hansom decided that he could ask eight dollars at the regular rates, and might even venture on ten, and the result showed that as a judge of human nature he was a success.

They were married in May, and Lord Lowes acted as best man, and his sister sent her warmest congratulations and a pair of silver candlesticks for the dinner-table, which Wainwright thought were very handsome indeed, but which Miss Cuyler considered a little showy. Van Bibber and Travers were ushers, and, indeed, it was Van Bibber himself who closed the door of the carriage upon them as they were starting forth after the wedding. Mrs. Wainwright said something to her husband, and he laughed and said, “Van, Mrs. Wainwright says she’s much obliged.”

“Yes?” said Van Bibber, pleased and eager, putting his head through the window of the carriage. “What for, Mrs. Wainwright–the chafing-dish? Travers gave half, you know.”

And then Mrs. Wainwright said, “No; not for the chafing-dish.”

And they drove off, laughing.

“Look at ’em,” said Travers, morosely. “They don’t think the wheels are going around, do they? They think it is just the earth revolving with them on top of it, and nobody else. We don’t have to say ‘please’ to no one, not much! We can do just what we jolly well please, and dine when we please and wherever we please. You say to me, Travers, let’s go to Pastor’s to-night, and I say, I won’t, and you say I won’t go to the Casino, because I don’t want to, and there you are, and all we have to do is to agree to go somewhere else.”

“I wonder,” said Van Bibber, dreamily, as he watched the carriage disappear down the avenue, “what brings a man to the proposing point?”

“Some other man,” said Travers, promptly. “Some man he thinks has more to do for the girl than he likes.”

“Who,” persisted Van Bibber, innocently, “do you think was the man in that case?”

“How should I know?” exclaimed Travers, impatiently, waving away such unprofitable discussion with a sweep of his stick, and coming down to the serious affairs of life. “What I want to know is to what theatre we are going–that’s what I want to know.”