“I was left alone in the world when quite young and have lived around in boarding-schools and college. I’m a graduate of Harvard and I’ve travelled a little. There was some money left from my father’s estate, not much. I’m not rich. I’m a Secret Service man, and I love my work. I get a good salary and was this morning promoted to the position next in rank to my chief, so that now I shall have still more money. I shall be able to make your daughter comfortable and give her some of the luxuries, if not all, to which she has been accustomed.” “My dear boy, that part is not what I am anxious about--” interrupted the mother. “I know,” said Gordon, “but it is a detail you have a right to be told. I understand that you care far more what I am than how much money I can make, and I promise you I am going to try to be all that you would want your daughter’s husband to be. Perhaps the best thing I can say for myself is that I love her better than my life, and I mean to make her happiness the dearest thing in life to me.” The mother’s look of deep understanding answered him more eloquently than words could have done, and after a moment she spoke again. “But I do not understand how you could have known one another and I never have heard of you. Celia is not good at keeping things from her mother, though the last three months she has had a sadness that I could not fathom, and was forced to lay to her natural dread of leaving home. She seemed so insistent upon having this marriage just as George planned it--and I was so afraid she would regret not waiting. How could you have known one another all this time and she never talked to me about it, and why did George Hayne have any part whatever in it if you two loved one another? Just how long have you known each other anyway? Did it begin when you visited in Washington last spring, Celia?” With dancing eyes Celia shook her head. “No, Mamma. If I had met him then I’m sure George Hayne would never have had anything to do with the matter, for Cyril would have known how to help me out of my difficulty.” “I shall have to tell you the whole story from my standpoint, and from the beginning,” said Gordon, dreading now that the crisis was upon him, what the outcome would be. “I have wanted you to know who and what I was before you knew the story, that you might judge me as kindly as possible, and know that however I may have been to blame in the matter it was through no intention of mine. My story may sound rather impossible. I know it will seem improbable, but it is nevertheless true, everything that I have to tell. May I hope to be believed?” “I think you may,” answered the mother searching his face anxiously. “Those eyes of yours are not lying eyes.” “Thank you,” he said simply, and then gathering all his courage he plunged into his story.