He drew a long breath; he sank comfortably back into the old seat and into the old sense of security, and addressed himself with a joyous air and renewed enthusiasm to the old role of love-making. Just like a man--the very man who thinks he has such a deep insight into dark matters, who thinks he knows so much about everything in the wide world, especially women! "You are the most conscientious creature alive!" declared Rube, happier than ever, over a nearly lost treasure. "The whole amount of your offence seems to be that you once thought you cared--" "Yes--that's it! I once thought so." "But _I_ once thought that I cared for another girl. You would not, for that reason, wish to send me adrift, would you?" "No. Only I wish you hadn't!" "Just the way I feel about it." He laughed uncontrollably. "Pretty one! Soul of honor! What other girl would have opened her lips about such a trifle? And now I will not be put off another moment. Name the day which is to make me the happiest of men." The day was named, and Mell really felt more composure of mind and less disquietude of spirit than she had known for many a day. She had eased, to some extent, her guilty conscience. She had shed many bitter, if unavailing, tears over Rube and her dead father; and now, convinced that she could not help herself, and determined to make the best of it, her mind drifted complacently over the long stretch of prosperous years before her, wherein she would be neither lonely, nor poor, nor unhappy, nor unloved; with sugar plums to her taste and jewels in quantity--for there are just two things in this world every young woman is sure to love--tinsel and taffy. A healing balm now poured itself, so to speak, into her life and future prospects. Of Jerome she saw no more. He had gone home before her father's funeral. He had seemingly passed out of her life forever. She never so much as mentioned his name, even to Rube, and she even thought of him less frequently than of yore. How could she be expected to think of him with the wedding trousseau demanding all her thoughts and time? But one day Rube came to the farm-house, worried, and told Mell, of his own accord, that it was about Jerome and Clara. There had been a row between them. The Honorable Archibald Pendergast, as she well knew, was no ordinary man--neither, it seemed, was he an ordinary lover. Notwithstanding his late rejection, he had been paying Clara such marked attentions in Washington that a society journal had publicly announced their engagement; whereupon Jerome had delivered his ultimatum--she would marry him at once or else they were quits. "And I don't blame him," declared Rube, "not one bit! He stood as much at her hands, and stood it as long, as a man _can_ stand. I never could have taken the same from you." Ah, Rube, we little know, any of us, just what we are taking at any hour in the day and at the hands of our own friends! It is well for us that we do not.