“Why, your engagement to my sister! Aren’t you going to marry Charlotte?” “Assuredly, I’m not!” was his quick and emphatic answer. “Have you--have you--broken it off, then--so soon?” She was moving her trembling hands over each other, unable to keep them still, and holding her face half averted, afraid to look at him save in brief glances, lest her eyes might betray the love that was swelling in her heart. “You are talking in puzzles, Rhoda! I’ve never had the faintest desire to marry Charlotte, or anybody but you.” Her face dropped lower and her bosom heaved. What could it all mean? Had they been deceiving her? And why? “She said--that is--I understood--” she stumbled. Then he broke in upon her embarrassed bewilderment. “She didn’t say she was going to marry me, did she? Lloyd Corey is the happy man. It was love at first sight, of the most violent sort, with him, and he would take nothing but an outright ‘yes’ for his answer, and that inside of two weeks. It was a pretty little love comedy, and I wished a hundred times that you were there to watch it with me.” She moved unsteadily to a chair and sank down, her face in her hands. It had been such tragedy to her! And now it was taking all her self-control to hold herself firmly in hand under the reaction. At once he was beside her, dropping upon one knee and trying to take her hands from her face. “What is it, Rhoda? What is the matter? Look at me, dearest!” “Yes, Jeff--let me realize--wait--one moment!” He watched her anxiously, her hands in his, as with a deep, long breath, a tension of the muscles and a pressing together of her lips she regained control of herself. She withdrew her hands and slowly lifted her face as he rose to his feet. “It’s nothing, Jeff--no, I don’t mean that--it is so much. But--I thought--Charlotte led me to think that--she was going to marry you--and now--to find that you’re not--that you still--” She stopped and half turned away her face, trying to hide the confession she knew was there of all it meant to find that his love was still her own. But already he had seen enough to set his heart on fire and he sprang toward her, as if to take her in his arms. “And you cared so much? Rhoda, deny me no longer!” She drew away from him and said humbly: “Can you forgive me, Jeff? Indeed, I would not have thought it possible, but it seemed to have happened. It was just one of Charlotte’s tricks.” “Forgive you, dear heart? I do not think you could do anything that I would not forgive!” Her glance swept the room. Then she looked up at him with a smile and said significantly, “Even this?” “Even this, Rhoda, else I would not be here. I held out against the pleading of my heart as long as I could. But I longed so much to see you and wanted so much to help you, that I couldn’t stay away any longer. I’ve come, dear, to beg you once more to be my wife. Let me give you, at once, the protection of my name--”