“Press me no more Mr. Snooper,” said Gladys Vavasour-Smith.  “I can never be yours.”

“You have led me to believe different, Gladys,” said Bertram D. Snooper.

The setting sun was flooding with golden light the oriel windows of a magnificent mansion situated in one of the most aristocratic streets west of the brick yard.

Bertram D. Snooper, a poor but ambitious and talented young lawyer, had just lost his first suit.  He had dared to aspire to the hand of Gladys Vavasour-Smith, the beautiful and talented daughter of one of the oldest and proudest families in the county.  The bluest blood flowed in her veins.  Her grandfather had sawed wood for the Hornsbys and an aunt on her mother’s side had married a man who had been kicked by General Lee’s mule.

The lines about Bertram D. Snooper’s hands and mouth were drawn tighter as he paced to and fro, waiting for a reply to the question he intended to ask Gladys as soon as he thought of one.

At last an idea occurred to him.

“Why will you not marry me?” he asked in an inaudible tone.

“Because,” said Gladys firmly, speaking easily with great difficulty, “the progression and enlightenment that the woman of to-day possesses demand that the man shall bring to the marriage altar a heart and body as free from the debasing and hereditary iniquities that now no longer exist except in the chimerical imagination of enslaved custom.”

“It is as I expected,” said Bertram, wiping his heated brow on the window curtain.  “You have been reading books.”

“Besides that,” continued Gladys, ignoring the deadly charge, “you have no money.”

The blood of the Snoopers rose hastily and mantled the cheek of Bertram D. He put on his coat and moved proudly to the door.

“Stay here till I return,” he said, “I will be back in fifteen years.”

When he had finished speaking he ceased and left the room.

When he had gone, Gladys felt an uncontrollable yearning take possession of her.  She said slowly, rather to herself than for publication, “I wonder if there was any of that cold cabbage left from dinner.”

She then left the room.

When she did so, a dark-complexioned man with black hair and gloomy, desperate looking clothes, came out of the fireplace where he had been concealed and stated: 

“Aha!  I have you in my power at last, Bertram D. Snooper.  Gladys Vavasour-Smith shall be mine.  I am in the possession of secrets that not a soul in the world suspects.  I have papers to prove that Bertram Snooper is the heir to the Tom Bean estate, [12] and I have discovered that Gladys’ grandfather who sawed wood for the Hornsby’s was also a cook in Major Rhoads Fisher’s command during the war.  Therefore, the family repudiate her, and she will marry me in order to drag their proud name down in the dust.  Ha, ha, ha!”

   [Footnote 12:  An estate famous in Texas legal history.  It took
   many, many years for adjustment and a large part of the property
   was, of course, consumed as expenses of litigation.]