Day and her daughters had retired that night, their boarder sat
up writing a letter.
Deleah found it pushed under her plate at breakfast the next morning,
Gibbon always breakfasting early and alone.
"I think you behaved nobly," the letter ran. "Do not heed what others in
their spite and jealousy may say. The man Forcus is a purse-proud snob.
But if as such he is too proud to receive you into his family, remember
that there is another that have better taste. My family is highly
respectable, but they would receive you gladly, for my sake. And as for
me, I should always think you did me honour by becoming mine. Which honour
I pray you, my beloved Deleah, to do me."
Deleah crumpled the note in her hand--she was down before her mother and
sister, that morning--and took it into the kitchen where Emily was making
the breakfast toast, and rammed it, with the poker, and a good will, into
the heart of the glowing coals.
She thought as she did so of the talk with her mother the other night in
which the name of the Honourable Charles had figured. She had only half
meant what she had said then, but now--how could she ever so lightly have
contemplated for one moment such a marriage!
"And what young chap's love-letter are you a-burnin' of now, Miss Deleah?"
Emily facetiously inquired, waving the round of toast gracefully before
the bars.
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