) "You must have seen it.
This can be no surprise to you. You may blame me in your heart for not
speaking sooner. But you were young. There seemed time enough. Then,
lately, when I saw that you were no longer a child, I decided to speak
as soon as your mother should have returned. But to-day I felt that I
could not wait longer. I must know at once--now! I must hear you say
that you love me. That you will be my wife. You will--Esther?"
His impassioned tones lingered on the name with ecstasy.
The startled girl forced herself to look at him, a look swift as a
swallow's dart, but in it she saw everything--the light on his face--the
love in his eyes! And something else she saw, something of which she did
not know the name but from which, not loving him, she shrank with an
instinctive shiver of revolt. He seemed a different man. The minister,
the teacher, was gone, and in his place stood the lover, the claimer.
Yes--that was it. He claimed her, his glance, his voice--somewhere in
the girl's heart a red spark of anger began to glow.
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