“When your sister wouldn’t give me your address, she hinted that you had all the masculine attention you cared for; then Tilly Nepple visited town again last week and she had been sick and called Dr. Gray.  She asked him about you, and he told what I fine time you had at Chautauqua and Chicago, with the rich new friends you’d made.  I was watching for you about this time, and I just happened to be at the station in Hartley last Saturday when you got off the train with your fine gentleman, so I stayed over with some friends of mine, and I saw you several times Sunday.  I saw that I’d practically no chance with you at all; but I made up my mind I’d stick until I saw you marry him, so I wrote just as I would if I hadn’t known there was another man in existence.”

“That was a very fine letter,” said Kate.

“It is a very fine, deep, sincere love that I am offering you,” said George Holt.  “Of course I could see prosperity sticking out all over that city chap, but it didn’t bother me much, because I knew that you, of all women, would judge a man on his worth.  A rising young professional man is not to be sneered at, at least until he makes his start and proves what he can do.  I couldn’t get an early start, because I’ve always had to work, just as you’ve seen me last summer and this, so I couldn’t educate myself so fast, but I’ve gone as fast and far as I could.”

Kate winced.  This was getting on places that hurt and to matters she well understood, but she was the soul of candour.  “You did very well to educate yourself as you have, with no help at all,” she said.

“I’ve done my best in the past, I’m going to do marvels in the future, and whatever I do, it is all for you and yours for the taking,” he said grandiosely.

“Thank you,” said Kate.  “But are you making that offer when you can’t help seeing that I’m in deep trouble?”

“A thousand times over,” he said.  “All I want to know about your trouble is whether there is anything a man of my size and strength can do to help you.”

“Not a thing,” said Kate, “in the direction of slaying a gay deceiver, if that’s what you mean.  The extent of my familiarities with John Jardine consists in voluntarily kissing him twice last Sunday night for the first and last time, once for himself, and once for his mother, whom I have since ceased to respect.”

George Holt was watching her with eyes lynx-sharp, but Kate never saw it.  When she mentioned her farewell of Sunday night, a queer smile swept over his face and instantly disappeared.

“I should thing any girl might be permitted that much, in saying a final good-bye to a man who had shown her a fine time for weeks,” he commented casually.

“But I didn’t know I was saying good-bye,” explained Kate.  “I expected him back in a week, and that I would then arrange to marry him.  That was the agreement we made then.”

As she began to speak, George Holt’s face flashed triumph at having led her on; at what she said it fell perceptibly, but he instantly controlled it and said casually:  “In any event, it was your own business.”