“Miss Rose Mary,” he blurted out without any preamble at all, and drops of the sweat of an agony of anxiety stood out all over the wide brow, “I have been talking with Mr. Alloway, and I have come to you to see if we can’t all get together and settle this mortgage question to the profit of all concerned.  I lent him that money six years ago with the intention of trying to get you to be my wife just as soon as you recovered from your—­your natural grief over the way things had gone with you and young Alloway.  I have waited longer than I had any intention of doing, because I was absorbed in this political career I had begun on, but now I see it is time to settle matters, as the farm is running us all into debt, and I’m very much in need of you as a wife.  I hope you see it in that light, and the marriage can’t take place too soon to suit me.  You are the handsomest woman in my district, and my constituents can not help but approve of my choice.”  Something of the Senator’s grandiloquence was returning to him, and he regarded Rose Mary with the pride of one who has appraised satisfactorily and is about to complete a proposed purchase.

And as for Rose Mary, she stood framed against the fern-lined dusk at the back of the milk-house like a naiad startled as she emerged from her tree bower.  Quickly she raised her hand to her breast and just as quickly the pressure of the letter laying there against her heart sent a flood over her face that had grown pale and still, but she raised her head proudly and looked the Senator straight in the face with a questioning, hurt surprise.

“You didn’t make the terms clear when you lent the money to us,” she said quietly.

“Well,” he answered, beginning to take heart at her very tranquil acceptance of the first bombardment, “I thought it best to let a time elapse to soothe your deceived affections and cure your humiliation.  For the time being I was content to enjoy culling the flowers of your friendship from time to time, but I now feel no longer satisfied with them, but must be paid in a richer harvest.  We will take charge of this place, assure a comfortable future for the aged relatives in your care, and as my wife you will be both happy and honored.”  The Senator was decidedly coming into his own, and smile, glance and voice as he regarded Rose Mary were unctuous.  In fact, through their slits his eyes shot a gleam of something that was so hateful to Rose Mary that she caught her breath with horror, and only the sharp corner of her letter pressed into her naked breast kept her from reeling.  But in a second she had herself in hand and her quick mother-wit was aroused to find out the worst and begin a fight for the safeguarding of her nesties—­and the nest.

“And if I shouldn’t want to—­to do what you want me to?” she asked, and she was even able to summon a smile with a tinge of coquetry that served to draw the wily Senator further than he realized.