Delsie Read Free

think so,” she replied, in confusion.
    “Modest! Oh, too modest. You must know I have been admiring you from afar.”
    “Indeed, Mr. Grayshott!” She looked at him in alarm, eyeing the door in case of requiring a hasty exit.
    “Forgive me! My emotions overpower me, seeing you like this for the first time. So lovely, lovelier even than I had supposed. Since the death of your poor mother, I have begun to hope—only hope, Miss Sommers—I do not by any means take it for granted...” He stopped, weaving on his feet, and a foolish smile settled on his hagged features as he sank into observing her.
    She arose and edged towards the door. “What is it you want of me?” she asked, deciding on the spot she would refuse the position he had come to offer.
    “I want you to be my wife.”
    “Oh!” She stared in blank astonishment. “You cannot be serious!”
    “I am totally serious. Marry me, Miss Sommers, and I will do all in my power to make you happy. I have loved you ever since your return to Questnow. I could not believe, when I heard in the village, that you were the little girl who left some years ago to go to school. Do not fear this is only a passing fancy.”
    “It is quite impossible!” she replied, becoming angry at his impertinence.
    “Make it possible! Say yes,” he implored, his voice becoming maudlin.
    “I’m sorry. No, I could not possibly.” She reached the door and fled upstairs to her room, without even saying good-bye. She was trembling from head to foot when she sat on the edge of her bed, as if she had just escaped a horrible fate. She marveled at the strange interview for days, but it was just at this time that she received the offer from the Johnsons, and her life was busy arranging the move, so that she did not dwell on it as she might otherwise have done. It became, in time, a bizarre experience she could consider with amusement—the day poor Mr. Grayshott had come to her, drunk, and offered marriage.
    When she returned to Questnow again after leaving the Johnsons, to take up her post at St. Mary’s School, she rather wondered if Mr. Grayshott would repeat his solicitation. Meeting him on the street one day a week after her return, she observed that he had gone rapidly downhill. His drunkenness was apparent now at a glance. His clothing had become disheveled, his hair not well groomed, and his face not lately shaved. He presented an altogether displeasing appearance. She crossed the street to avoid meeting him head on. But her tactic was in vain. Again he came to her at Miss Frisk’s, to which apartment she had returned, and again he made his preposterous offer, in more exaggerated phrases than formerly. And again he received very short shrift.
    “Please go away and don’t bother me again,” she said coldly. She was older now, more sure of herself, and he was no longer a character of any importance. She gave it very little thought this time.
    He had not bothered her again. He cast soulful eyes at her when they passed occasionally on the streets of the village, but he did not approach her, and after a few months she ceased to see him. Then her life settled into a dull routine, teaching at the school, reading in the evening, or playing piquet with Miss Frisk, who was making a bosom bow of her, going occasionally to a villager’s home for an evening of entertainment, as she would not have been allowed to do had Mama been alive. But a young girl needed some company after all, and so she went.
    On that dreary morning in early November, she plodded along the road to the school, with no thought that before she had returned to her room a whole new horizon would have opened before her. There would be a crack in the magic door that would lead eventually to the hill.
     

Chapter Two
     
    Baron deVigne sat in the morning parlor at the Hall in a deep concentration, staring with unseeing eyes through the French doors to the autumnal remains of a rose garden, with an occasional glance beyond to see