Page:Stanwood Pier--The ancient grudge.djvu/487

476 member him—shall be brought up to do justice to his memory."

The tender light in her eyes, the sacred feeling in her voice as she said this, revealed to Floyd the source of her serenity. The manner of her husband's death had given her an ideal which she must impress upon her son as his by inheritance, to be guarded proudly as an inheritance, to be kept untarnished in his soul; and she could never have made this ideal so personal to her boy if her husband had not died. She revealed her thought even more clearly to Floyd when she said, with tears shadowing her smile,—

"Hero for godfather, hero for father! Ah, I must teach my little Floyd to live!"

The time came when Floyd was discharged from the hospital. He had asked Marion to drive away with him; he gave orders to the coachman not to take them straight home, but to go through the park. And while their carriage rolled along the snow-covered, lonely roads, arched over by the garlanded trees, Floyd said,—

"You've always put me off and refused to talk business because I was n't well enough and would get excited. Now I'm well and I won't be put off any longer. When are we going to be married?"

She answered in a low voice,—

"Floyd, I want you to marry Lydia."

"What!" He looked at her dazed; she did not meet his eyes, but she put his arm gently down from her waist.

"Yes. Oh, Floyd, I told you I was going to make you love me. I spoke so positively because I was trying so hard to make myself believe it! And I thought as long as Lydia was married— But I have n't Lydia's charm, I have n't her attractiveness, I have n't anything—and now she—she's so forlorn—and she'd love you, Floyd—just as much as you love her! And when you love her, you ought to marry her—it would be wrong for you not to—wrong for you to marry me—and besides, I would n't—I won't—I can't!"