Page:Melville Davisson Post--The Man of Last Resort.djvu/46

22 his intention with the determination of a man who has a single object in life. An intermittent correspondence had been maintained, but after years this intention to wed Miss Lanmar had become rather an ideal something, and in this there was peril. But a few weeks before, he had intimated vaguely, that he was now a person of some local importance, and with no inconsiderable prospects of wealth, and to this Miss Lanmar had intimated quite as vaguely that she was waiting. But in it all there, seemed to be a powerful, albeit somewhat indistinct doubt. Years had passed, and years had a way of working frightful changes in people. The Miss Lanmar of to-day could not be the school-girl whom he had known.

The Executive leaned back in a seat of the stuffy little coach and speculated with grave concern At any rate, this alliance was now quite impossible. Complications had been thrust in; a duty, or what he conceived to be a duty, had sprung up, and this duty it was not his intention to evade.