“If it is your wish, father, I will marry.”

The day Perry Whaley was admitted to the bar of Kent County on motion of his father, he stopped with his pair of horses at Doctor Voss’s house, and asked Miss Marion to take a drive.  She was a peerless brunette, whose dark brown curls taking the light upon their luxuriance seemed the rippling of water from the large amber wells of her eyes.  In childhood she had looked with admiration on his straight, trim figure and manly courtesy, and hoped that she might find favor in his sight.  For this she had put by the scant opportunities in a small, old, unvisited town, to be wedded to her equals, and the whispered imputation that there was a taint in Perry Whaley’s blood made no impression upon her wishes.  Her younger sisters were gone before her, but true to the impetuous tendencies of her childhood she waited for Perry, indulging the dream that she was destined to be his wife.

The happy, supreme opportunity had come.  They took the road over the river drawbridge into another county; the frost was out of the ground, and the loamy road invited the horses to their speed until the breath of spring raised in Marion’s cheeks the color that dressed the budding peach orchards which spread over the whole landscape, as if Nature was in maternity and her rosy breasts were full of milk.

“Do you like these horses, Marion?” said Perry Whaley, when they had gone several miles.  “If you do you can drive them as long as you live.”

She laughed, more because it was the feminine way than in her feeling.

“Drive them alone?”

“Only when you do not want me to go.”

“Then it will seldom be alone, Perry.”

They both breathed short in silence, the happy silence of youth’s desire and assent, until Perry said, “You are sure you love me, then?”

“Must I be frank, Perry?”

“As much as ever in your life!”

“I am very sure.  I loved you in my childhood—­no more now than then, except that the growth of love has strengthened with my strength.”

“Marion,” said the young man with a thoughtful face, “if I have not long ago recognized this fidelity, which, to be also frank with you, I have suspected—­not because of any desert of mine, but love is like the light which we distinctly feel even with our eyes shut—­it has been because with all my soul I was laboring for my father’s love first.  You have seen the shadow on his brow?  How it came there I do not know.  I have thought that with my wife to light the dark chambers of our old house, a triple love would bloom there, and what he has called the demon in me would disappear beneath your beautiful ministrations.  Be that angel to both of us, and as my wife touch the fountain of his tears and make his noble heart embrace me!”

Marion Voss felt a great sense of trouble.  “Is it possible,” she thought, “that Perry has never suspected the cause of that shadow on the Judge’s life?  Perhaps not!  It would have been cruel to tell Perry, but crueller, perhaps, to let him grow to manhood in unchallenged pride and find it out at such a critical time.”  The rest of the ride passed in endearments and the engagement vow was made.