“Because in that case it is due to her to undeceive her,” he said. “I am glad I have entertained her. I should like to have the opportunity to do so indefinitely. Do you think there's a chance for me?” “What on earth do you mean?” asked his hostess, in unassumed stupefaction. “I mean, do you think she would marry me?” Varian brought out plumply. “Is there--was there ever anybody else?” For one instant Mrs. Dud lost her poise; in her eyes he almost saw more than she meant; the sheer, flat blow of it levelled her for a breath to the plane of other and ordinary women. But even as he thought it, it was gone. She put out her hand; she smiled; she shook her finger at him. “I think, my friend, she would be a fool not to marry you,” she answered him, clear-eyed; “and there was never,” her tone was too sweet, he thought, to carry but one meaning--pleasure for him, “there was never anybody else!” Varian walked straight to the garden. She was training a fiery wall of nasturtiums with firm white fingers. It occurred to him that he was ready to give up the tally-ho, and the Berkshires, and the scramble of pretty girls for the place beside him, to sit quietly and watch her among her flowers. “I'm getting old--old!” he said to himself, but he said it with a smile. For he knew that no boy's heart ever beat more swiftly, no boy's tongue ever sought more excitedly to find the right words. But when he faced her a little doubt chilled him: she was so calm and complete, in her sunny, busy, balanced life, that he feared to disturb that sweet placidity. With an undercurrent of fear, a sudden realization that he had no more the blessed egotism of youth to drive him on, he walked beside her, outwardly content, at heart a little solitary. At some light question he turned and faced her. “You could not have all the greenhouses, but there could be plenty of flowers,” he said pleadingly. “Flowers? Where?” she asked. “Wherever we lived,” he answered. “And oh, Mary, I think we could be happy together! Don't say no!” as she shrank a little. “Don't, Mary, for heaven's sake! I care too much--I care terribly. I am too old a man to care so much and--lose.... There, there, my dear girl, never mind. I can bear it, of course. Only I didn't know I'd planned it all out so, and--But never mind. I was going to have a bay-window full of--” He turned away from her for a moment. But her hand was on his arm. “We can plan it out together,” she said. He knew how she would blush; he had even dared to think how directly her clear gray eyes would meet his--her sky-ness was never hesitation--but he had not dreamed how soft her hair could be. End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Mrs. Dud's Sister, by Josephine Daskam