laugh. I am quite serious. Oh, why can’t you understand? Don’t you remember his last words to you?”
Margaret’s face paled under the warm color and she stared wide-eyed at her sister.
“I remember—I was to remain true to him until death joined us; and if I did not—but Clare! How absurd! He a mere boy of fifteen and I an infant of eleven! It is so ridiculous that I can’t help laughing, dearest.”
“It isn’t ridiculous,” protested Clare unhappily but positively. “Because he may be able to cause trouble between you and Ned yet. You know, Margie, you owe your life to Clifford—and if it had not been for you, he would he alive and well now.”
“Clare, you are positively idiotic tonight! I must insist that you go to sleep and get rid of your morbid thoughts. Why should you try to spoil my wonderful night, the most beautiful of my life?”
Margaret withdrew pettishly, and a few minutes afterward Clare heard her tucking herself into her own bed, that stood on the other side of their common reading stand. Slowly the lame girl slipped down into her bed again, but her eyes did not close. Still, she was not looking at the picture which she stared at; she was looking back across the years to the time when Margaret was eleven and she was nine—and Clifford Bentley fifteen.
It was a boy-and-girl, love affair—precocious, to be sure. Clifford adored the little tomboy with her mop of brilliant hair and her impulsiveness and her enchanting ways. She had let him put his seal ring upon her “engagement” finger, in return for his promise to give her a ride on his iceboat. That had been a wonderful sport! Then the tragic moment came when the thin ice broke under a too-sudden turn of the skeleton craft, and both children had been thrown into the icy water by the shock. It was Clifford who first came to the surface; it was he who dived and groped under the ice for Margaret, who brought her unconscious to the surface.
When rescue came, the boy’s coat was wrapped about the girl’s shivering form. Both children had had pneumonia from the exposure, but it was Clifford who had not survived it. His last words to his mother had been for Margaret: “Tell her I expect her to be true to me until death joins us. If she is not true, I shall come back to remind her of her promise.”
Clare, reviewing the pathetic and tragic little story, felt deep sympathy for Clifford, Clifford who had given his life for Margaret and was now forgotten. She, too, would gladly have done the same. She lay very quiet, although she did not sleep.
As she heard the library clock chime the hours once, twice, she suddenly moved the handkerchief and pressed it against her lips. As she did it she breathed out a prayer for Ned Wentworth and his happiness. Then with a little sigh, she slipped softly off to sleep.
4
Ned Wentworth could not sleep. He filled his pipe and settled down before the hearth where glowed
the urbanite’s humble apology for a wood-fire, a gas log. He had felt it impossible to write while he was fresh from the sweet influence of Margaret’s presence; he wanted to think over his happiness. Also, he wanted to think over another thing—an
intuition he had had of a something sinister hovering near while he had been in the garden with Margaret.
Exactly as he had told his sweetheart, he had felt burning, envious, malignant eyes fixed upon him from
