with a
broken leg, and she starts on Monday for Boston. Have the clergy ready,
for it's marriage."

Then in your bitter need you remembered having talked with me in this
hotel-parlor the very day of your accident. I had been a school-friend of
your dead sister, and for her sake, on the rare occasions of your seeing
me, you have always been polite and kindly patronized me. Now, lying
helpless and unable to extricate yourself from your dilemma, you recalled
the evident pleasure upon my foolish, tell-tale face at seeing you, the
delight I had betrayed in the attention you had shown me, such as finding
a seat at dinner for myself and my old lady friend, although some elegant
and fashionable girls were waiting with ill-suppressed eagerness for your
escort. Remembering all this, knowing as you did that I was poor, wearing
out my life in teaching, in your sore need you suddenly thought, "I wonder
if the girl wouldn't marry me? She'd make a good nurse, could look after
my traps, and, though she is as ugly as sin and a nobody, wouldn't be the
deuced disgrace to a fellow this Rollins woman will be. At all events,
she'll save me from that fate if she takes up with my offer. It's a choice
of evils, and this would be the least; and I'll try it." This, in plain,
unadorned speech, was what you thought. Then you sent for me, began very
pathetically to talk of your desolate state, your family all dead, and so
on; that it had been sadly brought home to you how alone you were while
lying sick, hour after hour, in this great hotel, with only your valet to
attend to you and take an interest in your well-being; and that, day after
day, as you lay thinking of your fate, my face had come before you,
recalling tender memories of your lost and dearly-loved sister. Then you
had remembered that as girl and boy we had been lovers, and really cared
very much for each other. As you got this far toward your _grande
denouement_, something in my face, I suppose, made you realize that if you
were to compass your ends with me it must be by honesty only. Then you
blurted it all out--in, as I could not help thinking as I listened, as
school-boyish and abashed a way as if you had--well, as if you had not
been a consummate man of the world, rather noted for your _aplomb_.

It came across me (as I heard you in dumb amazement, with crimson face and
trembling frame) that even the best polish of years' laying on will crack
somewhere under very hard pressure. Wel