“If you love me I beg, I implore, I beseech you in the name of that love—­for your, sake and my sake, to leave me.  Oh, can you not see why you must go?”

He stopped, even as he had before in the parlor in Mount Vernon Street.  He could but stop in the face of such an appeal—­and yet the blood beat in his head with a mad joy.

“Tell me that you love me,—­once,” he cried,—­“once, Cynthia.”

“Do-do not ask me,” she faltered.  “Go.”

Her words were a supplication, not a command.  And in that they were a supplication he had gained a victory.  Yes, though she had striven with all her might to deny, she had bade him hope.  He left her without so much as a touch of the hand, because she had wished it.  And yet she loved him!  Incredible fact!  Incredible conjury which made him doubt that his feet touched the snow of Brampton Street, which blotted, as with a golden glow, the faces and the houses of Brampton from his sight.  He saw no one, though many might have accosted him.  That part of him which was clay, which performed the menial tasks of his being, had kindly taken upon itself to fetch his bag from the house to the station, and to board the train.

Ah, but Brampton had seen him!

CHAPTER XIV

Great events, like young Mr. Worthington’s visit to Brampton, are all very well for a while, but they do not always develop with sufficient rapidity to satisfy the audiences of the drama.  Seven days were an interlude quite long enough in which to discuss every phase and bearing of this opening scene, and after that the play in all justice ought to move on.  But there it halted—­for a while—­and the curtain obstinately refused to come up.  If the inhabitants of Brampton had only known that the drama, when it came, would be well worth waiting for, they might have been less restless.

It is unnecessary to enrich the pages of this folio with all the footnotes and remarks of, the sages of Brampton.  These can be condensed into a paragraph of two—­and we can ring up the curtain when we like on the next scene, for which Brampton had to wait considerably over a month.  There is to be no villain in this drama with the face of an Abbe Maury like the seven cardinal sins.  Comfortable looking Mr. Dodd of the prudential committee, with his chin-tuft of yellow beard, is cast for the part of the villain, but will play it badly; he would have been better suited to a comedy part.

Young Mr. Worthington left Brampton on the five o’clock train, and at six Mr. Dodd met his fellow-member of the committee, Judge Graves.

“Called a meetin’?” asked Mr. Dodd, pulling the yellow tuft.

“What for?” said the judge, sharply.

“What be you a-goin’ to do about it?” said Mr. Dodd.

“Do about what?” demanded the judge, looking at the hardware dealer from under his eyebrows.

Mr. Dodd knew well enough that this was not ignorance on the part of Mr. Graves, whose position in the matter dad been very well defined in the two sentences he had spoken.  Mr. Dodd perceived that the judge was trying to get him to commit himself, and would then proceed to annihilate him.  He, Levi Dodd, had no intention of walking into such a trap.