iend and customer, as
she was pleased to call him, for the flowers sent so frequently during
her illness. Despite the faint color with which she had welcomed him,
Forrest could not but see how pale and fragile she looked, and the
slender white hand that he had watched so often flying over the clicking
keys seemed very limp and listless now. It only passively responded to
the warmth of his clasp. In fact, it hardly could be said to respond at
all. She was reclining in an easy-chair. A soft breeze, playing through
the open window, rippled the shining little curls about her white
temples, and Forrest drew his chair close to hers.

It was the first time they had been alone together since the night
following his home-coming in the late spring, the night of the luckless
dinner at Allison's, the night in which, leaving her to work alone at
the Lambert over his rough notes, he had gone, as she believed, to spend
the evening with his _fiancee_, the night when with almost frenzied
fingers she worked to finish every word of his report that he might find
it ready on his return, and that she might find, as she did, her way
home without him. Then had come the sudden cloud of her mother's serious
illness, of Mart's disappearance, the gloom of the strike, the crash of
the riots, the blow of her mother's death, a grief the more pathetic
because for several years mother and daughter seemed to have reversed
their relative positions and the child had become the protector,
guardian, and provider. Then the brutal wrong of Allison's accusation,
told her with such well-simulated sympathy and reluctance, but with such
exquisitely feminine stab in every sentence; the collapse, the struggle,
the suffering, the half-reluctant convalescence--and the sudden sunshine
of that afternoon when he turned from the carriage of the girl to whom
he was declared engaged, let her drive away without another glance, and
stood there, tall and stalwart and manly, his soft brown eyes fastened
on her face,--hers, Jenny Wallen's, a penniless, motherless, homeless
working-girl. Mrs. Wells had hugged herself with delight all the way
back, and would have said no end of foolish things but for her patient's
prohibition. Even the prohibition had not kept her afterwards from
telling Jenny how Forrest had refused his hand to Mr. Allison, refused
once more to set foot within his doors, and what, what could that mean?

But the girl, despite her woman's heart, had a clear brain