"No, walk, not run, to the nearest exit." He barked his new, ugly laugh at her as Sally was backing hurriedly toward the door, her body hunched as if his words had been actual blows, her face ghastly white. "You are entirely free to go, with my blessing! I am rather a connoisseur at kissing and I have just suffered a grievous disappointment. At the risk of appearing ungallant, I am forced to admit that you would have bored me intolerably if you had consented to 'trust me and give me all' in exchange for my silence in regard to your birth. Goodby, Sally-and good luck."

CHAPTER XIX

Somehow she made her way home, crept painfully, like a mortally wounded animal, up the circular staircase to her room. Bracing her shaking hands on her dressing table, she stared at her reflection in the mirror as if she had never seen that white-faced, enormous-eyed, stricken girl before.

Then horror and loathing of herself swept over her with such force that her knees buckled, and she sank to the floor. As she fell her hand knocked from the dressing table a copy of The Capital City Press, for which she was still subscribing, over her mother's protest, to glean spa.r.s.e news of David.

She shuddered as the roll bounced from her knees but in another moment her sick eyes flamed with new life, for half-revealed by the folding of the sheets was an unmistakable picture of the boy she still loved.

Her trembling fingers gouged at the wrapper. Why was _his_ picture on the front page? Was he in trouble? Hurt? Or-married?

Sally, crouching on the floor of her room, spread the crackling sheets of The Capital City Press, her eyes devouring the two-column picture of David Nash. Two lines of type above the photograph leaped out at her:

"Honor graduate of A. & M. inherits grandfather's farm."

He hadn't been injured or killed in an accident, he wasn't married! In a frenzy of relief and grat.i.tude to the G.o.d she had just been accusing of deserting her, Sally Barr, who had been Sally Ford, bent her head until her lips rested on the lips of the photograph. And it was rather a pity that Arthur Van Horne, "connoisseur of kissing," was not there to see the pa.s.sionate fervor of the kisses which the girl whom he had dismissed contemptuously was raining upon an unresponsive newspaper picture.

When at last she was calmer she read the short item through. It was the last paragraph that brought her to her feet, her slight body electric with sudden determination:

"Young Nash is living alone in the fine old farmhouse, and apparently is as capable in the kitchen as on the seat of a cultivator. He says his whole heart is in scientific farming, and that his only sweetheart is 'Sally,' a blue-ribbon heifer which he is grooming to break the world's b.u.t.ter-fat production record."

"David! Darling David!" she was laughing and crying at the same time.

"He hasn't changed! He hasn't forgotten that we're half-married!"

Jerking open a drawer of her dressing table she caught sight of her face in the mirror, and her eyes widened with delighted surprise. Gone was the pinched, white, shame-stricken face, and in its place was beauty such as she had never dreamed she possessed. She turned away from the mirror, tremulous and abashed, for what she had to do would not be easy.

Her eyes tried to avoid the exquisite photograph of her mother that stood in its blue leather frame on the dressing table, but at last she s.n.a.t.c.hed it up and carried it against her breast as she ran to her desk.

She felt that she was talking to Enid as she wrote, pleading for understanding and forgiveness from those dreaming, misty, cornflower-blue eyes:

"Mother, darling: I'm running away, to go to David. Please don't try to stop me or bring me back, for I'll have to run away again if you do. I'm going to marry David because I love him with all my heart and because he is the only man I could ever marry without causing you shame. He already knows the truth, and it made no difference in his love for me. You know how it was with Grant Proctor. You said yourself that if I told him, he would not want to marry me. And I could never marry a man without first telling him the truth. Arthur Van Horne knew and wanted me to be his mistress. He told me today. He did not think I was good enough to be his wife. It would always be the same. And so I am going to David, who knows and loves me anyway.

"Oh, Mother, forgive me for hurting you like this! But don't you see that I would hurt you more by staying? After a while you would be ashamed of me because I could not marry. I would humiliate you in the eyes of your friends. And I could not be happy ever, away from David. I wanted to die after Arthur Van Horne told me today what he really wanted of me, but now I know I want to live-with David. Please, Mother, don't think my love for you-"

She could write no more just then. Laying her hot cheek against the cold gla.s.s of the framed photograph of her mother she sobbed so loudly, so heart-brokenly that she did not hear a knock upon the door, did not know her grief was being witnessed until she felt a hand upon her shoulder.

"Sally, darling! What in the world is the matter?" It was Enid Barr's tender, throaty contralto.

Sally sprang to her feet, her eyes wild with fear, her mother's picture still tightly clutched in her hands. "I-I was writing you a letter!" she gasped. "I-I-"

"Perhaps I'd better read it now," Enid said in an odd voice, and reached for the scattered sheets of pale gray notepaper on the desk.

Sally wavered to a chair and slumped into it, too dazed with despair to think coherently. She could not bear to look at her mother, for she knew now how cowardly she had been, how abysmally selfish.

Her flaming face was hidden by her hands when, after what seemed many long minutes, she heard her mother's voice again:

"Poor Sally! You couldn't trust me? You'd have run away-like that?

Without giving me a chance to prove my love for you?"

Sally dropped her hands and stared stupidly at her mother. Enid was coming toward her, the newspaper with David's picture in it rustling against the crisp taffeta of her bouffant skirt. And on Enid's face was an expression of such sorrowful but loving reproach that Sally burst into wild weeping.

"Poor little darling!" Enid dropped to her knees beside Sally's chair and took the girl's cold, shaking hands in hers. "We all make mistakes, Sally. I've made more than my share. Maybe I'm getting old enough now to have a little wisdom. And I want to keep you from making a mistake that would cause both of us-and Court-untold sorrow."

"But I love David and I shan't love anyone else," Sally sobbed, though she knew her resistance was broken.

"I'm forced to believe that now, darling," Enid said gently. "And I shall not stand in the way of your happiness with him. That is not the mistake I meant."

"You mean that you'll let me marry him?" Sally cried incredulously. "Oh, Mother! I love you so!"

"And I love you, Sally." Enid's voice broke and she cuddled Sally's cold hands against the velvety warmth of her own throat. "Your mistake would have been to run away to marry David. You have a mother and father now, Sally. You're no longer a girl alone, as David called you. You have a place in society as our daughter, whether you want it or not. If David wants to marry you, he must come here to do so, must marry you with our consent and blessing."

"But-" Sally's joy suddenly turned to despair again. "He wouldn't marry a girl with a fortune. He told me so when he was here."

"That was when he was penniless himself," Enid pointed out. "I've just read this newspaper story about his inheriting his grandfather's farm.

It's a small fortune in itself, and since there's no immediate danger of your inheriting either my money or Court's, I don't believe he will let your prospective wealth stand in the way-if he loves you."

"Oh, he does!" Sally laughed through her tears. "Look!" She s.n.a.t.c.hed the newspaper from the floor and pointed to the last paragraph of the story about David. "He named his prize heifer after me! It says here his only sweetheart is 'Sally'! Oh, Mother, I didn't know anyone could live through such misery and such happiness as I felt today! I wanted to kill myself after Van-Oh!"

"Tell me just exactly what he said to you!" Enid commanded, her lovely voice sharpened with anger and fear.

When Sally had repeated the contemptuous, sneering speech as accurately as possible, her mother's face, which had been almost ugly with anger, cleared miraculously.

"The man is an unspeakable cad, darling, but I am almost glad it happened, since you escaped unscathed. He won't bother us again. I'm sure of it! He is not quite low enough to gossip about me to my friends.

It is evident that he planned all along to use his knowledge as a club to force you to submit to his desires. And now that he doesn't want you any more, he will lose interest in the whole subject. I've known Van nearly all my life and I've never known him to act the cad before. He's probably despising himself, now that his fever has cooled. If you marry David with our consent, he'll probably turn up at your wedding and offer sincere congratulations with a whispered rea.s.surance as to his ability to keep our secret."

"_When_ I marry David, not if!" Sally cried exultantly, flinging her arms about her mother's neck. "Oh, I'm so glad I have a mother!"

"Don't strangle me!" Enid laughed. "Leave me strength to write a proposal of marriage to this c.o.c.ksure young farmer who brags that he is as capable in the kitchen as on the seat of a cultivator!"

"He can't cook half as well as I can!" Sally scoffed. "You ought to taste one of my apple pies! He can play nurse to his blue-ribbon stock all he wants to, but he's got to let me do the cooking! And, Mother, you'll tell him how much I love him, won't you? And-and you might remind him that we only need half a marriage ceremony-the last half. Wouldn't it be fun if we could go back to Canfield and let 'the marrying parson'

finish the job?"

"Don't be too confident!" Enid warned her. "He may refuse you!" But at sight of Sally's dismay she relented. "I know he loves you, darling.

Don't worry. If I were you I'd get busy immediately on a trousseau."

"One dozen kitchen ap.r.o.ns will top the list," Sally laughed.

Four days later the second telegram that Sally had received from David arrived. "Catching next train East, darling. Happiest man in the world.

Can we be married day I arrive? Am wiring your blessed mother also. I'll be loving you always. David."

"Of course you can't be married the day he arrives!" Enid exclaimed indignantly when Sally showed her the telegram. "I'm going to give you a real wedding."

"I think the children are right, Enid." Courtney Barr unexpectedly championed Sally in her protest. "A quiet impromptu wedding, by all means. Our announcement to the papers will indicate that we approve, and since the boy is unknown in New York and Sally has only just been introduced, I think the less fuss the better."

Sally kissed him impulsively, aware, though the knowledge did not hurt her, that he liked her better now that she was to leave his home, than he had ever liked her. David arrived on Monday, and was guest of honor that night at a small party of Enid's and Sally's most intimate friends, at which time announcement of the forthcoming marriage was made. They remembered having seen him briefly at Sally's coming-out party and so handsome he was, so much at ease, now that he was to be married to the girl he loved, that it occurred to none of Enid's guests to question his eligibility. Sally, sitting proudly beside him, looked happily from her mother to David, knew that in gaining a husband she was not losing a mother, as she would have done if Enid had not interrupted the writing of that terrible letter.