Harriet L. Smith

“ One inevitably gets down to realities when life flickers like a candle in the wind, and Forbes no longer debated the question of Agatha's love for him. In addition to Warren's testimony, he had the memory of a kiss, a dream kiss, pressed on his cheeks as he struggled back to consciousness after the stormy interview with Hephzibah, a kiss salt with tears and sweet with ineffable promise. ”

“ Forbes' father."
Forbes took a step ahead, then halted, and stood with his feet a little apart, like one who balances himself on the deck of a heaving ship in a high sea. "But where," he stammered, "where is the other Miss Kent?"
"There is no other. My Great-aunt Agatha, for whom I was named, died twelve years ago."
There was a momentary palpitating silence which Julia was the first to break.
"And you mean," she arraigned her, "that all this summer you have been a deliberate impostor, palming yourself off on Mr. Forbes as an old woman, allowing him to think—oh, it's too shameful. ”

“ Deacon Wiggins, or Mrs. James Doolittle?"
"I'm afraid you're not as serious-minded as you ought to be, Agatha," chided Miss Finch. "Marriage is 'most anything you like except a joke, and you can't make a joke of it, no matter how hard you try." As she moved toward the house with her two letters, leaving Agatha to collect the widely scattered mail, her face wore a troubled, anxious look, as if the fateful solemnity of the married state already had reached out from the future and enveloped her. ”

“ Miss Kent spoke hastily. "Oh, that was only part of your dreaming. Fainting people often have such fancies."
"Very likely," Forbes agreed. "You see, I don't know much about fainting. It never happened to me but once before." He turned his head on his damp pillow and lapsed into silence. It was the part of discretion, perhaps, to leave Miss Kent under the impression that the kiss was an illusion, due to his semi-conscious state, but he knew better. It was as real as music, or flame, or electricity. It had certain characteristics of all three.
It must have been Hephzibah. ”

“ I—I could hardly have Howard read it." All at once his white cheek showed a stain of red, as if the mere thought that any eyes but his own should see that letter was humiliating beyond endurance.
Julia's letter was as long as usual and decidedly more sentimental. She surrendered herself with abandon to the luxury of heart-break. She recalled a number of tender episodes, and wondered pathetically why fate could not have spared lovers so fond. To Agatha, Julia's melancholy was a theatrical make-believe on the face of it, as much a pose as her pretense of affection. ”

“ Into Agatha's mind had flashed the preposterous hope that possibly Warren's tolerant attitude toward her escapade was shared by the only man who counted.
"Who? Forbes? Why the devil should you care what he thinks? Old Forbes was always a bit of a prig."
Positive hatred looked out of Agatha's eyes. "Oh, I don't know. I shouldn't call a man a prig simply because he objected to being tricked and deceived and lied to. I suppose he has a high enough ideal of women so that he expects a girl to tell the truth, just as much as if she were a man. ”

“ Agatha looked after her darkly. She was instantly convinced that the speaker was the owner of a toy poodle.
A moment before the train pulled out, a man came into the Pullman and took his seat in the section opposite hers, glancing amiably at the promising little family across the aisle. Agatha shrank away from the look, feeling faint and sick. There was an ominous ringing in her ears. So strong was her sense of panic that if she had had another moment in which to act, she might have marshalled her brood off the train and trusted to finding some excuse that would satisfy Mrs. Van Horne. ”

“ Forbes reviving found himself indoors. He was stretched on the couch in the living-room. The odor of camphor was much in evidence and his hair felt damp, as if he had been taking a dip in the surf. Some one was chafing his hand. "Hephzibah," he said faintly.
The voice of Miss Kent answered him, speaking in a muffled fashion, as if she had a cold in her head.
"She's gone. That horrible girl is gone. She shall never come near you again."
Even after his late experience the adjective seemed to indicate prejudice. ”

“ Agatha briefly outlined Warren's philanthropic scheme in behalf of Hephzibah Diggs, and Miss Finch turned all colors as she listened. Now at last she knew that the romantic novels with which she solaced her leisure hours had not misled her. There really was such a thing as love at first sight.
"Agatha!" she ventured tremulously, "you could marry that man to-morrow if you liked. It's as plain as the nose on your face that he's dead in love with you." ”

“ Forbes felt her figure stiffen against his arm, and instinct told him she was frightened. "What is the matter?" he cried, sickening with a new realization of his helplessness.
Agatha did not answer, but as she stared ahead she understood that doomsday had arrived unheralded. A young woman was tripping toward them, a handsome young woman, who even without beauty would have attracted all eyes by the distinction of her dress and bearing. It could be no other than Julia. ”

“ Agatha loved the orphanage and the orphans. The maternal instinct, always strong in her, exulted in the swarm of children on whom she could lavish herself. There was no urchin so refractory that Agatha could not find excuses for him, no little face so plain that she could not discern in it something of winsomeness. She saw the humor in the naughtiness of some unruly youngster where most of her associates perceived only irrefutable confirmation of the doctrine of original sin. Mrs. Van Horne, accustomed to aids who did their duty with automatic faithfulness, found Agatha too good to be true. ”

“ It's one of the times when you feel everything that has ever been written and more too. You simply want to sit and think how wonderful it is to be alive."
"By jove, it's you that's wonderful," Forbes exclaimed. "That sensitiveness wears off with most people long before they're my age, to say nothing of yours. But you feel the thrill of life and the mystery and the adventure, as if you were a girl."
"Yes," Agatha acquiesced, "I do." ”

“ Even the certainty that the hour of her humiliation was at hand could not hurt worse than the joy ringing through his voice as he spoke another woman's name. She wondered dully at her own folly. She had been warned and had not heeded. She had known all the time of his love for Julia, and yet had foolishly assumed that since Julia's selfish decision had put her out of his reach, he would turn to her for consolation. Her pride had not rebelled over taking what Julia had thrown away. Indeed she had thought very little about herself. ”

“ Agatha had fought Forbes' depression stubbornly while the week was young, and then as hope strengthened, with an audacious, irresistible gaiety that occasionally swept him off his feet. Never had it seemed so difficult to simulate age. A score of times a day she found it necessary to strangle a peal of girlish laughter, or tone it down to the subdued quaver appropriate to her years. It was incredibly irksome to subject her buoyant feet to the yoke of decorum. ”

“ Aunt Estelle caught her sleeve. "Can't you understand, Julia?" she hissed. "This place is a private asylum. That crazy old creature on the porch, and now him. It's perfectly plain. Let us go away at once."
Forbes caught most of this sibilant outburst. He turned white with anger. "Miss Kent?" he pleaded, and Agatha pulled herself together. Her voice was steady if slightly unnatural, as she answered, "Yes, I am here."
Forbes tried to laugh. The consciousness of being enveloped in baffling mystery made his blindness doubly intolerable. ”

“ Forbes!" gasped Miss Finch, and at once the strains of the wedding march rang in her ears.
"Mr. Forbes! The very idea! The only trouble with him is that he never did anything in his life to apologize for. He's so perfect that people mistake him for a worm and trample on him."
"I didn't mean to make you mad, Agatha," Miss Finch protested timidly, shrinking from the flame in Agatha's eyes. The inexplicable girl stared for a moment and then to Miss Finch's great relief, burst into a laugh.
"Fritz, you're funnier than a box of monkeys. If you must know, Mr. Warren sent the chocolates." ”

“ Taking boarders is a good deal like getting married. There's a whole lot you've got to keep dark, or you might as well give up first as last."
Her outburst terminated in a sniff. Immediately the tip of her pale, seemingly bloodless little nose became as red as a cherry, the instantaneous sequel of tears, with Miss Finch.
[Pg 9]
"You're so smart, Agatha," she quavered. "If only you'd sell this house and wash your hands of Howard and me, who haven't the least claim on you, you could go to the city and look around and like enough find a husband. There's plenty of men who don't mind red hair." ”

“ It's what a man is himself that counts with me."
"Then I suppose it's the deacon," said Agatha, with youth's characteristic readiness to jump at conclusions.
"I don't know, I'm sure. Don't hurry a body so, Agatha." Miss Finch spoke more sharply than was her wont. "If you were picking out a husband at my time of life, you wouldn't want to be rushed so that, like enough, you'd pick the wrong man."
Agatha shook her head. "No, Fritz, if I ever became such a heart-breaker that I had a batch of proposals in a single mail, I'd take as long as I could to make up my mind. ”

“ Agatha was aware that with many women as with all men, undisputed possession tends to indifference. Forbes' one chance with Julia, she implicitly believed, was to awaken in the mind of that complacent young woman a doubt as to whether her unfortunate lover was in reality hers always, as he declared himself. Forbes, who scorned to ask even for a few months' delay, could not be expected to lend himself to the scheme unfolding in Agatha's fancy. Some friend must do for him what he would not stoop to do for himself. ”

“ Love isn't quite so reckless a passion as it was when you were young, Miss Kent. Julia and I belong to a reasonable generation, tremendously matter-of-fact. She was really cut up over the whole affair, but she felt she owed it to herself to break the engagement since my future was so uncertain, and I felt I owed it to her to release her. So we were perfectly agreed, you see."
"Yes, I see." Agatha was glaring at him with the expression of a vixen. "Just as businesslike as if you had been planning to go into partnership to raise chickens, weren't you? And so that's what the modern girl is like. ”