“You said just now that you always thought of me as a friend,” he began. “I wonder----Oh! it’s no good,” he added quickly, with a nervous movement of his hands, “I can’t make pretty speeches! After all, it’s simple; why should I play the coward? I can take ‘no’ for answer, if the worst comes to the worst, and----Margaret, I know it’s asking a great deal, but--I want you to marry me.” She cast a swift, startled glance at him, turning in her chair, and then dropped her eyes, asking herself bewilderedly whether this was still some fantasy. The words which he murmured now, pleading incoherently with her silence, confirmed the hopes which, in spite of her scrupulous devotion, refused to be gainsaid, thrusting themselves shamelessly into the foreground of her troubled thoughts. An inward voice, condemned by her wavering resolution as a whisper from the lips of treachery, suggested plausibly that after all Dorothy might have made a mistake; she repelled it fiercely, taking a savage pleasure in her pain, accusing herself, with vehement blame, as one who would fain stand in the way of her daughter’s happiness. Even if she had deserved these fruits of late harvest which seemed to dangle within her grasp, even if her right to garner them had not been forfeited long ago by her folly of the past, how could she endure to figure as a rival, triumphing in her own daughter’s discomfiture? Womanly pride and a thousand scruples barred the way. “I love you,” she heard him say again; “I believe I have always loved you since----But you know how it was in the old days.” “Don’t remind me of that!” she pleaded, almost fiercely; “I was--I can’t bear to think of what I did! You ought not to forgive me; I don’t deserve it.” “Forgive?” he echoed, blankly. “Oh, you are generous--but it is impossible, impossible; it is all a mistake; let us forget it.” “I don’t understand! Is it that--that you don’t care for me?” Margaret gave a despairing little sigh, dropping her hands on the sides of her chair. “You don’t know,” she murmured. “It isn’t right. No--oh, it must be No!”