“I am going to be frank with you this evening, Miss Vosburgh.  The time has come when I should be so.  Has not Mrs. Vosburgh told you something of the nature of my interview with her?”

The young girl merely bowed.

“Then you know how sincere and earnest I am in what—­in what I shall have to say.”

To his surprise he felt a nervous trepidation that he would not have imagined possible in making his magnanimous offer.  He found this humble American girl more difficult to approach than any other woman he had ever met.

“Miss Vosburgh,” he continued, hesitatingly, “when I first entered this room I did not understand your true worth and superiority, but a sense of these has been growing on me from that hour to this.  Perhaps I was not as sincere as I—­I—­should have been, and you were too clever not to know it.  Will you listen to me patiently?”

Again she bowed, and lower this time to conceal a slight smile of triumph.

Encouraged, he proceeded:  “Now that I have learned to know you well, I wish you to know me better,—­to know all about me.  My father was a Northern man with strong Northern traits; my mother, a Southern woman with equally strong Southern traits.  I have been educated chiefly abroad.  Is it strange, then, that I cannot feel exactly as you do, or as some of your friends do?”

“As we once agreed, Mr. Merwyn, each must choose his own course for life.”

“I am glad you have reminded me of that, for I am choosing for life and not for the next ten months or ten years.  As I said, then, all this present hurly-burly will soon pass away.”  Her face darkened, but in his embarrassment and preoccupation he did not perceive it.  “I have inherited a very large property, and my mother’s affairs are such that I must act wisely, if not always as she would wish.”

“May I ask what Mrs. Merwyn would prefer?”

“I am prepared to be perfectly frank about myself,” he replied, hesitatingly, “but—­”

“Pardon me.  It is immaterial.”

“I have a perfect right to judge and act for myself,” resumed Merwyn, with some emphasis.

“Thank you.  I should remember that.”

The words were spoken in a low tone and almost as if in soliloquy, and her face seemed to grow colder and more impassive if possible.

With something approaching dismay Merwyn had observed that the announcement of his large fortune had had no softening influence on the girl’s manner, and he thought, “Truly, this is the most dreary and business-like wooing that I ever imagined!”

But he had gone too far to recede, and his embarrassment was beginning to pass into something like indignation that he and all he could offer were so little appreciated.