“You can have champagne, buttermilk--anything. The cellar is excellent. I stocked it myself.” “No; we will have nothing,” she answered with decision, and when they had dismissed the man, Wayne looked at her and smiled as he stirred his tea. “I haven’t tasted a drop since you came. Do you know why?” “No; I really haven’t an idea,” she replied with an assumption of careless interest. She knew what he wished to say; she entertained no delusions as to his sincerity; but she wished him to say it. There was tenderness in his manner and tone as he bent toward her. “I did it for you, Addie. It was because you came back into my life. I had been going a wicked gait; in another year I should have been all in. But the night father showed me your picture and I knew it was you he was going to marry, I made a resolution never to drink again. I have been doing pretty well, haven’t I?” “It has been fine of you; I appreciate it; I thank you for it.” “I realized perfectly why it was that you were coming--why you were going to marry my father. I had known that there must come a time when your relations with your mother would become intolerable. I knew that you had to escape from her. If you had to be sacrificed I was glad chance was sending you my way that I might make it all easier for you. Your plight--the thought of a girl like you being hawked about--was hideous. I ought to have seen that, that summer we first knew each other; but I punished myself and I hope you felt it too, when I thought it was your mother that I was revenging myself on. And now, Addie,” he concluded spaciously, “I want you to be happy.” “You are a dear boy,” she murmured. She did not interrupt him with the hundred questions that thronged into her mind. He was giving his own twist to the facts of their earlier relationship and his own escape from her mother’s net; but she correctly surmised that he was deceiving himself and she was in a mood to aid and abet deception. She had drunk her tea and rested her arms on the table, urging him on with her eyes. The flame had warmed her cheeks to a bright colour and was finding and brightening the bronze in her hair. “You deserve the best; you have a right to happiness,” he went on. “I mean to stand between you and unhappiness.” “You are very good to me, Wayne!” He placed his hand lightly on hers that lay near--and removed it instantly, afraid to risk too much. “That first afternoon, when I went home just to see you, it was because my old feeling for you had risen in me strong at the sight of you again. When you begged me to let you alone that day, I obeyed you. You had come with fine ideals of your duty and an ambition to fill your place in my father’s house worthily. You wanted to live up to his own dignity. I saw all that.”