Sam looked out over the dark garden in silence. "Well," he said slowly, "if you can't, then I don't want to see you. It would hurt me too much to see you. I'll go away. I will go on loving you, but I will go away, so that I needn't see you. Yes; I will leave Old Chester--" "Oh, I wish you would," she said. "You don't love me," he repeated, in a sort of hopeless astonishment; "why, I can't seem to believe it! I thought you must--I love you so. But no, you don't. Not even just a little. Well--" And without another word he left her. She could not hear his step on the locust flowers on the porch. CHAPTER XVII _"I wish your confounded Old Chester people would mind their own affairs! This prying into things that are none of their business is--"_ Lloyd Pryor stopped; read over what he had written, and ground his teeth. No; he couldn't send her such a letter. It would call down a storm of reproach and anger and love. And, after all, it wasn't her fault; this doctor fellow had said that she did not know of his call. Still, if she hadn't been friendly with those people, the man wouldn't have thought of "looking him up"! Then he remembered that he had been the one to be friendly with the "doctor fellow"; and that made him angry again. But his next letter was more reasonable, and so more deadly. _"You will see that if I had not happened to be at home, it might have been a very serious matter. I must ask you to consider my position, and discourage your friends in paying any attention to me."_ This, too, he tore up, with a smothered word. It wouldn't do; if he wounded her too much, she was capable of taking the next train--! And so he wrote, with non-committal brevity: _"I have to be in Mercer Friday night, and I think I can get down to Old Chester for a few hours between stages on Saturday. I hope your cook has recovered, and we can have some dinner? Tell David he can get his sling ready; and do, for Heaven's sake, fend off visitors!"_ Then he added a postscript: _"I want you all to myself."_ He smiled as he wrote that, but half shook his head. He did not (such was his code) enjoy being agreeable for a purpose. "But I can't help it," he thought, frowning; "she is so very difficult, just now." He was right about the postscript; she read the letter with a curl of her lip. "'A few hours,'" she said; then--"'I want you all to myself.'" The delicate color flooded into her face; she crushed the letter to her lips, her eyes running over with laughing tears. "Oh, David," she cried,--"let's go and tell Maggie--we must have such a dinner! He's coming!" "Who?" said David. "Why, Mr. Pryor, dear little boy. I want you to love him. Will you love him?" "I'll see," said David; "is Alice coming?" Instantly her gayety flagged. "No, dear, no!" "Well; I guess she's too old to play with;" David consoled himself; "she's nineteen."