“It’s all up with you, old fellow.  The R. has heard you’re fast with a broken leg, and she starts on Monday for Boston.  Have the clergy ready, for it’s marriage.”

Then in your bitter need you remembered having talked with me in this hotel-parlor the very day of your accident.  I had been a school-friend of your dead sister, and for her sake, on the rare occasions of your seeing me, you have always been polite and kindly patronized me.  Now, lying helpless and unable to extricate yourself from your dilemma, you recalled the evident pleasure upon my foolish, tell-tale face at seeing you, the delight I had betrayed in the attention you had shown me, such as finding a seat at dinner for myself and my old lady friend, although some elegant and fashionable girls were waiting with ill-suppressed eagerness for your escort.  Remembering all this, knowing as you did that I was poor, wearing out my life in teaching, in your sore need you suddenly thought, “I wonder if the girl wouldn’t marry me?  She’d make a good nurse, could look after my traps, and, though she is as ugly as sin and a nobody, wouldn’t be the deuced disgrace to a fellow this Rollins woman will be.  At all events, she’ll save me from that fate if she takes up with my offer.  It’s a choice of evils, and this would be the least; and I’ll try it.”  This, in plain, unadorned speech, was what you thought.  Then you sent for me, began very pathetically to talk of your desolate state, your family all dead, and so on; that it had been sadly brought home to you how alone you were while lying sick, hour after hour, in this great hotel, with only your valet to attend to you and take an interest in your well-being; and that, day after day, as you lay thinking of your fate, my face had come before you, recalling tender memories of your lost and dearly-loved sister.  Then you had remembered that as girl and boy we had been lovers, and really cared very much for each other.  As you got this far toward your grande denouement, something in my face, I suppose, made you realize that if you were to compass your ends with me it must be by honesty only.  Then you blurted it all out—­in, as I could not help thinking as I listened, as school-boyish and abashed a way as if you had—­well, as if you had not been a consummate man of the world, rather noted for your aplomb.

It came across me (as I heard you in dumb amazement, with crimson face and trembling frame) that even the best polish of years’ laying on will crack somewhere under very hard pressure.  Well, you were honest and told me all, never pretending, as you had at first essayed to do, that it was out of any lingering regard for myself as your sister’s friend that you sought me now, but simply on account of my availability.  Had there been some bright young beauty with wealth and station at hand, no thought of me would ever have entered your mind:  all this I understood at once from your half confessions—­all this, I was glad to find, you had at least enough honor to let me know, although you risked what to you in your actual situation was very perilous—­a refusal.