"Yes, I do really think so. Considering your beauty, your strength, your easy finances, your college crushes, your empress-like reign, you've done pretty well to consider others as much as you have."
"Others?" the echo came crisply. "What others?"
"Your father mainly."
"My father!" Linda faced him now, and sparks were flying from the brown eyes. "Bertram King, I adore my father!"
"Yes, I know,—when you have time."
"What—what is it? Would you have had me not go to college?"
"No,"—King spoke in a reasonable tone,—"you did right to go to college."
"Thank you—a thousand times." The crisp waves of the speaker's hair seemed to snap as on a cold night while she bowed her thanks.
King played with his glasses; and she turned quickly back to the window in order that he should not see that sudden tears quenched the fire in her eyes. Her father's preoccupied face rose before her. Was it true that she had ever neglected him? A habit of sighing unconsciously had recently grown upon him. She had noticed that, and also that in late months new lines of harassment had come in his face. Never mind, she was going to run away with him, devote herself to him, far from this man who dared to comment, and to pick flaws in her behavior. He should never see her change.
"I did want to do some riding with you, Linda. The idea comes to me like a picture or a poem when I think of those forests:—
'—here and there in solemn lines
The dark pilasters of the pines
Bore up the high woods' somber dome;
Between their shafts, like tapestry flung,
A soft blue vapor fell and hung.'
Nice, isn't it?"
"On what bond issue did you find that?" inquired Linda, tapping the window pane with restless fingers, and watching impatiently for her laggard cavalier.
"I told Dr. Young I wanted to play with you and your father, but he said Mr. Barry and I didn't know how to play."
"He was quite right."
King regarded his companion's averted, charming head with a pale smile. "You know," he remarked after a little, "we can love people while seeing their imperfections."
"Not I! I love only perfection."
King gave a noiseless whistle, and raised his eyebrows. "I'm so glad I'm perfect," he said at last.
Linda looked around at him slowly. How pale he was! Ripples of the flood of tenderness that had bathed the thought of her father flowed grudgingly toward her companion, as he stood there in the long twilight, regarding her with lack-lustre eyes.
"There are pines outside of Colorado," she remarked.
"That's what Mrs. Porter says."
"Mrs. Porter?" Linda echoed him with interest; "but she has left town. I went to the studio yesterday, and she's gone; gone to Maine without letting me know."
"You've been pretty hard to locate, remember. She told me she was going."
Linda sighed. "If she could have gone West with Father and me, it would have been perfect."
"I'm said to resemble Maud very strongly," suggested King.
Linda regarded him with quick appraisement. "I never thought of it." She turned back to the window. "I can quote poetry, too, when I think of her. The other day I found a verse that fits her:—
'He that of such a height hath built his mind,
And reared the dwelling of his thoughts so strong,
As neither fear nor hope can shake the frame
Of his resolvéd powers; nor all the wind
Of vanity or malice pierce to wrong
His settled peace, or to disturb the same:
What a fair seat hath he, from whence he may
The boundless wastes and wilds of man survey.'
A man named Daniel wrote that. Isn't it perfect?"
"H'm," agreed King. "A Daniel come to judgment. Maud likes you very much," he added.
"She loves me, thank you," flashed Linda, against his tepid speech.
"Then it runs in the family. I've told her how I felt toward you myself."
"And told her all my faults, I suppose." The girl bit her lip.
"Oh, I knew she could see those. Maud is very penetrating." Fire and dew flashed at him again. "Linda," he added in a different tone, "Whitcomb can't be much longer. Do you know I'm asking you to marry me?"
An inarticulate sound from his companion, and continued drumming on the window pane.
"I came to your father's employ ten years ago. I climbed the ladder slowly, but just three years and eight months ago I reached the rung from which I could see you." A pause. "You've haunted me ever since."
"Unintentional, I assure you." But Linda, her cheeks burning, could not look around again. In her tumult of hurt pride and indignation there penetrated a strain of triumph.
"Certainly," returned King; "you had other things to attend to, and so had I. You've attended to them with vast credit, and your father will tell you that I'm not so bad. Now a new chapter begins. Probably no one will ever love you as comprehendingly as I do."
"I shouldn't think of marrying any one who didn't consider me perfect," announced Linda clearly.
"Remember the chromo that goes with me—Mrs. Porter. Maud would be your cousin." King dangled his eyeglasses as he made the suggestion, and regarded a short curl of hair that had dropped against his companion's white neck.
Linda was silent for a moment. "I suppose you'll poison her mind against me now," she said.
"No. You've poured hot tea and cold water on my budding hopes, but I'm strictly honorable; and besides, I'm going to remember that both douches are good for plants. Ask your father if I know how to hang on to a proposition."
Silence. Linda's strong heart beat against her ribs as the man came a step nearer to her.
"Don't you touch me!" she exclaimed.
"I wasn't thinking of touching you, Linda. I just wanted to fix your hair. Something has fallen down here; just wait, I see a hairpin."
The girl preserved her pose under the caressing hands for a second, but he fumbled the soft lock, and she suspected him.
"That will do," she said, jerking her head away.
"Oh, well, I fixed it. You might thank me, going out as you are."
"I should think Fred had fallen dead!" she exclaimed.
"Yes; Maud prescribes Maine for me. She knows the lay of the land pretty well up there. She says she has known it for thirty years. I think that's an exaggeration, don't you?"
"I don't know how old she is, and I don't care; I only know that it must have nearly killed her husband to die and leave her."
King rocked back and forth on his toes. "I've heard that it did, entirely," he responded.
Linda gave her head a quick shake. "No wonder I say idiotic things!" she exclaimed. "It's catching!—Fred! Fred!" The sudden call was a cry of relief, and the girl quickly stepped out of an open glass door upon the piazza, and hurried down the steps. A motor had stopped beside the walk. King caught up his hat and followed her.
"I thought you'd never come!" cried Linda, to the joy of the distracted chauffeur.
"Great Scott! I thought I never would either!" he responded.
"What