"I am sure, I am very well pleased," he said, heartily extending his hand to Mr. Gardiner. "Certainly I give my consent, in which my wife joins me."
Jay Gardiner's face flushed. He could not make a scene by refusing to accept the situation. He took the proffered hand. Mrs. Pendleton rose to the occasion.
"If he prefers Sally, that is the end of it as far as Louise is concerned. Sally had better have him than for the family to lose him and all his millions," she thought, philosophically.
Jay Gardiner's friends congratulated the supposedly happy lovers. Louise spoke no word; it seemed to her as though the whole world had suddenly changed; her golden day-dreams had suddenly and without warning been dispelled.
During that homeward ride, Jay Gardiner was unusually quiet. His brain seemed in a whirl – the strange event of the afternoon seemed like a troubled dream whose spell he could not shake off, do what he would.
He looked keenly at the girl by his side. Surely she did not realize the extent of the mischief she had done by announcing their betrothal.
It was not until he had seen his party home and found himself alone at last in his boarding-house that he gave full rein to his agitated thoughts.
It was the first time in the life of this debonair young millionaire that he had come face to face with a disagreeable problem.
Gay, jolly Sally Pendleton, with her flashing get-up – a combination of strangely unnatural canary-yellow hair, pink cheeks and lips, and floating, rainbow-hued ribbons – jarred upon his artistic tastes.
He did not admire a girl who went into convulsions of laughter, as Sally did, at everything that was said and done. In fact, he liked her less each time he saw her. But she was young – only eighteen – and she might, in time, have a little more sense, he reflected.
What should he do? He looked at the matter in every light; but, whichever way he turned, he found no comfort, no way out of the dilemma.
If he were to explain to the world that the engagement was only the outcome of a thoughtless wager, his friends would surely censure him for trying to back out; they would accuse him of acting the part of a coward. He could not endure the thought of their taking that view of it. All his friends knew his ideas concerning honor, particularly where a lady was concerned.
And now he was in honor bound to fulfill his part of the wager – marry Sally Pendleton, whom he was beginning to hate with a hatred that startled even himself.
Such a marriage would spoil his future, shipwreck his whole life, blast his every hope. But he himself was to blame. When that hoidenish, hair-brained girl had made such a daring wager, he should have declined to accept it; then this harvest of woe would not have to be reaped.
Suddenly a thought, an inspiration, came to him. He would go to Sally, point out to her the terrible mistake of this hasty betrothal, and she might release him from it.
CHAPTER V
The thought was like an inspiration to Jay Gardiner. He would go to Sally and ask her to break this hateful engagement; and surely she would be too proud to hold him to a betrothal from which he so ardently desired to be set free.
The following day he put his plan into execution. It was early in the afternoon when he entered the hotel, and going at once to the reception-room, he sent up his card. He had not long to wait for Miss Sally. He had scarcely taken two or three turns across the floor ere she floated into the room with both hands outstretched, an eager smile on her red lips.
He took one of the outstretched hands, bowed ever it coldly, and hastily dropped it.
"I was expecting you this afternoon," said Sally, archly, pretending not to notice his constraint, "and here you are at last."
"Miss Pendleton," he began, stiffly, "would you mind getting your hat and taking a little stroll with me? I have something to talk over with you, and I do not wish all those people on the porch, who are listening to us even now, to hear."
"I would be delighted," answered Sally. "Come on. My hat is right out there on a chair on the veranda."
He followed her in silence. It was not until they were some little distance from the hotel that he found voice to speak.
"You say you want to talk to your betrothed," laughed the girl, with a toss of her yellow curls; "but you have maintained an unbroken silence for quite a time."
"I have been wondering how to begin speaking of the subject which weighs so heavily on my mind, and I think the best way is to break right into it."
"Yes," assented Sally; "so do I."
"It is about our betrothal," he began, brusquely. "I want to ask you a plain, frank question, Miss Pendleton, and I hope you will be equally as frank with me; and that is, do you consider what you are pleased to call your betrothal to me, and which I considered at the time only a girlish prank, actually binding?"
He stopped short in the wooded path they were treading, and looked her gravely in the face – a look that forced an answer. She was equal to the occasion.
"Of course I do, Mr. Gardiner," she cried, with a jolly little laugh that sounded horrible in his ears. "And wasn't it romantic? Just like one of those stories one reads in those splendid French novels, I laughed – "
"Pray be serious, Miss Pendleton," cut in Gardiner, biting his lip fiercely to keep back an angry retort. "This is not a subject for merriment, I assure you, and I had hoped to have a sensible conversation with you concerning it – to show each of us a way out of it, if that is possible."
"I do not wish to be set free, as you phrase it, Mr. Gardiner," she answered, defiantly. "I am perfectly well pleased to have matters just as they are, I assure you."
His face paled; the one hope which had buoyed him up died suddenly in his heart.
Sally Pendleton's face flushed hotly; her eyes fell.
"I will try to win your liking," she replied.
"It is a man's place to win," he said, proudly; "women should be won," he added, with much emphasis. "When two people marry without love, they must run all the risk such a union usually incurs."
"Pardon me, but I may as well speak the truth; you are the last girl on earth whom I could love. It grieves me to wound you, but it is only just that you should know the truth. Now will you insist upon carrying out the contract?"
"As I have told you from the start, my answer will always be the same."
"We will walk back to the hotel," he said, stiffly.
She rose from the mossy log and accompanied him without another word. At last he broke the silence.
"I am a gentleman," he said, "and am in honor bound to carry out this contract, if you can not be induced to release me."
"That is the only sensible view for you to take," she said.
He crushed back the angry words that rose to his lips. He had never disliked a woman before, but he could not help but own to himself that he hated the girl by his side – the girl whom fate had destined that he should marry.
CHAPTER VI
As Jay Gardiner and Sally walked to the hotel the young man had made up his mind that the wedding should be put off as much as possible.
Suddenly Sally touched him on the arm just as they reached the flight of steps leading to the veranda.
"I have one request to make of you," she said. "Please do not tell any of my folks that you do not care for me, and that it is not a bonâ-fide love-match."
He bowed coldly.
She went on: "Mamma has a relative – an old maiden cousin, ever so old – who liked my picture so well that she declared she would make me her heiress. She's worth almost as much as you are. They named me after her – Sally Rogers Pendleton. That's how I happen to have