LILIAN’S PERPLEXITIES.
A TALE IN TWELVE CHAPTERS.
.png)
CHAPTER III. THE IDOL TOPPLES.
Rumbling alone in the rotonde, the landscape hidden in a white fog of dust, there was no occupation for Charles Westby but thought. And at the outset it was satisfactory enough for him to think, because conscience told him he had acted well. In a moment of peril an avowal of love had escaped from a young girl’s lips. It had caused great embarrassment to him,—love and marriage were so wholly out of his province that he had never once so much as thought of love in his intercourse with Lilian. There ought to be no equivocation in the matter; it was right he should know at once, and clearly, the state of his feelings and position. Nothing could be more annoying than that she should continue to cherish any absurd ideas. As soon as possible, though with a trepidation he could scarcely conceal, he had resolutely addressed her on the subject. The result had proved the wisdom of his course,—it had appeared from her own confession that she must have talked quite unconsciously on the mountain, and she had, moreover, positively appealed to him not to hold her to her random words; and so there was a good ending to a ridiculous affair.
Not a bit of it! The legal mind then came into action, and he must needs doubt and question which of Lilian’s two contradictory declarations was the right one. The more he sifted the matter the more his opinion turned to a belief that words uttered at a period of danger were more likely to be true than words which maidenly modesty would speak in a quiet interview,—cold words, which his own manner might have evoked. Ay, even the slightest evidence must be brought to bear on this important question. Had not Fred Temple told him that Lilian, starting in her fitful sleep after the accident, had constantly called to Karlo