An Ambitious Man

It was more than an hour before the rector returned to the library

where Preston Cheney awaited him. When the senator heard his

approaching step, he looked up, and was startled to see the pallor on

the young man's face. "You have something sad, something terrible to

tell me!" he cried. "What is it?"

The rector walked across the room several times, breathing deeply,

and with anguish written on his countenance. Then he took Senator

Cheney's hand and wrung it. "I have an embarrassing announcement to

make to you," he said. "It is something so surprising, so

unexpected, that I am completely unnerved."

"You alarm me, more and more," the senator answered. "What can be

the secret which my frail child has imparted to you that should so

distress you? Speak; it is my right to know."

The rector took another turn about the room, and then came and stood

facing Senator Cheney.

"Your daughter has conceived a strange passion for me," he said in a

low voice. "It is this which has caused her illness, and which she

says will cause her death, if I cannot return it."

"And you?" asked his listener after a moment's silence.

"I? Why, I have never thought of your daughter in any such manner,"

the young man replied. "I have never dreamed of loving her, or

winning her love."

"Then do not marry her," Preston Cheney said quietly. "Marriage

without love is unholy. Even to save life it is unpardonable."

The rector was silent, and walked the room with nervous steps. "I

must go home and think it all out," he said after a time. "Perhaps

Miss Cheney will find her grief less, now that she has imparted it to

me. I am alarmed at her condition, and I shall hope for an early

report from you regarding her."

The report was made twelve hours later. Miss Cheney was delirious,

and calling constantly for the rector. Her physician feared the

worst.

The rector came, and his presence at once soothed the girl's

delirium.

"History repeats itself," said Preston Cheney meditatively to

himself. "Alice is drawing this man into the net by her alarming

physical condition, as Mabel riveted the chains about me when her

mother died.

"But Alice really loves the rector, I think, and she is capable of a

much stronger passion than her mother ever felt; and the rector loves

no other woman at least, and so this marriage, if it takes place,

will not be so wholly wicked and unholy as mine was."