Page:Pratt portraits - sketched in a New England suburb (IA prattportraitssk00full).pdf/213

 Then she lifted her face in the firelight. "Fred Ingraham," she cried, in a despairing tone, "I believe I do hate you—you are—so—cruel."

Fred looked at the tragic face, and an exultant light came into his own.

"It's a kind of hate I'm not afraid of, Mary," he said, and he held out his arms.

The shadows among the baronial pillars seemed to be swaying and wavering before her eyes, and her own step faltered. But she went to him, because she could not help it. He kissed her, rather cautiously, and she made no resistance. A strange, delicious, poignant happiness overwhelmed her.

That night Mary cried herself to sleep for the first time since she was a little child. But in that beneficent storm of grief her last tottering defences were swept away. When, but a few hours later, the time of parting came, her valiant lover knew that her surrender was complete.

Mrs. Beardsley generously forgave her young cousin for robbing her of her "treasure," though, as her short period of possession went by, she learned still better to measure her impending loss. She permitted herself but one form of revenge, which, however, she always clung to. As often as she had occasion to write to him in after years, she never failed to address him as her "dear bandit."

As for Old Lady Pratt, though Mary had gone contrary to all her prognostications, she was too