Fred S. Lincoln

“ Kent watched her grief with a sense of satisfaction. It tempered some his own disappointment at the first, but, as his humiliation grew, just so much did his anger increase until he ceased to give her sorrow a place in his reasoning, and with a quick resolution he left the room without further word for her.
Virgie watched him leave with mingled feelings of sorrow, anger and perplexity. She felt that she was in some way responsible for the outcome of the affair, and yet—"Had I but known" she kept repeating to herself. The sense of her own innocence aided her to excuse herself. ”

“ If one day's suffering can give us a week of this knowledge, or even if a year of pain can give us the touch to feel an hour of delicious happiness, and feel it deep into our hearts, the pain is worth the bearing. May we all learn to recognize the goodness we may have at hand and enjoy its fullest blessings, as we should learn to bear our reverses, looking forward to the happiness that must come some time."
He was uttering the reasonings and dictates of his suffering self quite as though he were not before nearly two-score people, and like as if he might be musing in his study alone. ”

“ It was not long until a vehicle came to view, and in it were discovered Landy, Mrs. George and Gyp, wound in a mountain of blankets and robes that would have made them well-nigh unrecognizable to anyone but Virgie. The horse stopped in front of the gate panting and steaming, and she left the window to go for a wrap that she might greet the visitors and bring them in. Then she paused under the inspiration of a different thought—she would let them surprise her. The happiness would be more complete, and she sat down by the table again endeavoring to control her elation. ”

“ Gradually a chill of fear crept over her. She fought with even greater persistency against it than she had done against the recognizing of Kent a few moments before; and yet it clung—clung with all the tenacity of evil, and she was brought to confess to herself that another secret had come to make her its guardian, and this last was the knowledge that the secrecy of Kent's exploit lay within her power, either to divulge or retain, to save him from disgrace. She had kept from her father Harvey's promise to write in the thought that he might never do so. ”

“ He tried to do and failed, then tried again and again, and always failure came to reward him. He knew now the cause of it all, and Kent's words impressed him with their strangely fitting application to his own hopes. They were near bringing him back to his youthful feeling of resentment against causes outside his own making when he went drifting off into the happy days of his wooing that lasted into a delicious nap of refreshing dreams. His tired brain took up the order of his early days in glowing sequence and bore him along in a labyrinth of joys unspeakable. ”

“ The wound so fresh, at the thought of the parson's betrayal, would, in other times, have served him for a week's sorrowing, but now he could not cling to it; the childish effort to nurse the pain and hold it at his heart was fruitless, for the fear that followed close upon the betrayal chilled his every consciousness and left him, body and soul, unalive to the weight of sorrow or the pain of throbbing self-pity. ”

“ MY DEAR MISS BRANDT:— Back in town again in an environment of rush and hurry, with all its attendant clatter, I find myself drawn to the quiet of your life irresistibly, and this, too, after but a month here. It is a strange thing how humors take hold of us at times, and we want just what we have not and grow sick in the wanting, because we must take other things willy-nilly. ”

“ Her population was more a mixture of chance inhabitants of a far different character than Frank Harvey had been led to believe, and as he sat, book in hand, before the window looking out upon the road that wandered down in a deep decline, edged by a handsome wall of autumn-touched trees, he wondered at the unusual gentleness that he had found here, where every tale had spoken of naught but wildness and depravity, and he was much at a loss for an explanation. ”

“ There was a note of questioning in his voice, but her head still bent low. "Virgie, my sweetheart!" he repeated, with suppressed joy, and, as she raised her radiant face, he caught the dear cheeks between his hands and pressed her forehead with his lips. "I love you—I love you, sweetheart!" he said. "You are my queen—my queen! Tell me, dear, do you really love me? Do you?" he asked.
"You wouldn't have done that if I'd had my bonnet on!" she said, drawing away from the fence and saucily adjusting that head-piece.
"Who cares for bonnets?" ”