Let's Kiss and Part

19

Cassidy Ellyson had, indeed, refused her lover's request.

Ernest Noel had gauged her quite correctly in asserting that she would be unwilling to be married simply, without the pomp and ceremony so dear to the feminine mind.

And, besides, though pained over her lover's accident, she could not forgive in her heart the first because of it.

She argued to herself that if he had not gone to the funeral, he would not have been forced to the haste that had resulted so disastrously to himself and caused her so cruel a mortification.

"Whoever heard of anything so outré as a man's going to a funeral in his wedding suit, and on the eve of his marriage?"

She cried to herself in a passion of jealous anger, hating poor Angeline for the sympathy he had shown and the few thoughts she had taken from the proud bride who had claimed all.

Despite her love for him, Cassidy longed to punish her lover for his fealty to Angeline's memory.

She did not consider that he had already suffered enough. She desired his punishment to come through her, the chosen of his heart.

If anyone had told her that the fire of his love that had burned so fiercely until that day in the park had cooled down into an indifference that he would not own even to his own heart, she could not have believed it.

They had had their lovers' quarrels before, flirted with others before, kissed and made up always. She expected things to go as usual.

She had not punished him enough yet, and the refusal to marry him on his sickbed was a stroke that secretly pleased her very much. It would cause him such cruel pain he would realize her value more.

"Tell him to get well as soon as possible, so that my wedding gown will not get out of fashion," was the gay message sent by Mrs. van Dorn, who with Mrs. Frensh went to call on the invalid.

Perhaps it was the sight of the bereaved mother in her deep mourning that put the thought of Angelina in his mind—perhaps she had never been out of it since that tragic night. Anyhow, he received Cassidy's messages with apparent resignation, and in the long days of convalescence, while she thought he was yearning for her with ceaseless impatience, his thoughts kept wandering to the dead girl, living over in memory their brief acquaintance—the first time he had seen her and been startled by her naïve, girlish beauty, the struggle with Keller when he had rescued her from the villain's rude advances, the drive to the park, and—the fatal kiss!

Whenever Adler recalled that sweet, clinging kiss he had taken from Angelina's red, flowerlike lips, his heart would beat wildly in his breast, and the warm color flush up to his brow

The garbled story of a glass of wine too much that he had told to Angelina in excusing himself, was quite untrue. He had not taken any wine; it was a bewildering flash-up of emotion that had throbbed at his heart and made him yield to the temptation to press her sweet lips with his own.

It was true that the influence of Cassidy still remained so strong that he had soon turned from the girl to watch the passing throngs for his old love that he might note the jealous flash of her great eyes at the sight of an apparent rival—afterward when suffering from the effects of his accident in the park, and exposed to the tender witcheries of Cassidy, it had been easy to win him back.

But the events of that night, when Anglinea had come to Mrs. Frensh's—her love, her humiliation, her despair, coupled with Cassidy's heartless behavior, were impressed ineffaceably on his heart. The one had inspired pity and sympathy, the other deep disgust.

"Pity is akin to love," and now that Angelina was dead Adler knew that, had she lived, he could have loved her as well—aye, better—than he had ever loved proud, jealous Cassidy, who looked on him as a sort of slave to her caprices, to be scolded and sent away, then whistled back at will.