The Two Destinies

I handed her the open letter to read.

She blushed delightfully; she cast one tenderly grateful look at me, which I remembered but too well for many and many an after-day. The next moment, to my astonishment, this changeable creature changed again. Some forgotten consideration seemed to have occurred to her. She turned pale; the soft lines of pleasure in her face hardened, little by little; she regarded me with the saddest look of confusion and distress. Putting the letter down before me on the table, she said, timidly: "Would you mind adding a postscript, sir?"

I suppressed all appearance of surprise as well as I could, and took up the pen again.

"Would you please say," she went on, "that I am only to be taken on trial, at first? I am not to be engaged for more"--her voice sunk lower and lower, so that I could barely hear the next words--"for more than three months, certain."

It was not in human nature--perhaps I ought to say it was not in the nature of a man who was in my situation--to refrain from showing some curiosity, on being asked to supplement a letter of recommendation by such a postscript as this.

"Have you some other employment in prospect?" I asked.

"None," she answered, with her head down, and her eyes avoiding mine.

An unworthy doubt of her--the mean offspring of jealousy--found its way into my mind.

"Have you some absent friend," I went on, "who is likely to prove a better friend than I am, if you only give him time?"

She lifted her noble head. Her grand, guileless gray eyes rested on me with a look of patient reproach.

"I have not got a friend in the world," she said. "For God's sake, ask me no more questions to-night!"

I rose and gave her the letter once more--with the postscript added, in her own words.

We stood together by the table; we looked at each other in a momentary silence.

"How can I thank you?" she murmured, softly. "Oh, sir, I will indeed be worthy of the confidence that you have shown in me!" Her eyes moistened; her variable color came and went; her dress heaved softly over the lovely outline of her bosom. I don't believe the man lives who could have resisted her at that moment. I lost all power of restraint; I caught her in my arms; I whispered, "I love you!" I kissed her passionately. For a moment she lay helpless and trembling on my breast; for a moment her fragrant lips softly returned the kiss. In an instant more it was over. She tore herself away with a shudder that shook her from head to foot, and threw the letter that I had given to her indignantly at my feet.