Page:The time spirit; a romantic tale (IA timespiritromant00snaiiala).pdf/296

 had professed a stern determination to be no longer friends with Mary was rather touched. She well knew that she was a person "to bank on." Besides, Mrs. Wren had an honest admiration for a fine talent and the unassumingness with which it was worn. She was incapable of making an enemy, for her one idea was to bring pleasure to other people. If ever human creature had been designed for happiness it must have been this girl, yet none could have been more fully bent on casting it willfully away.

As a fact, both Milly and her mother had been much troubled by the course of recent events. The previous afternoon Jack had taken a sad farewell of his friends in Broad Place. His passage was already booked in the Arcadia, which that very Saturday was to sail from Liverpool to New York. All his hopes had proved futile, all his arguments vain. Mary could not be induced to change her mind, which even at the eleventh hour he had ventured to think was just possible. In those last desperate moments, strength of will had enabled her to stick to her resolve. And in the absence of any intimation from Bridport House the Tenderfoot had been driven to carry out his threat. Yet up till the very last he had tried his utmost to persuade the girl he loved to merge her own life in his and accompany him to that new world where a career awaited him.

Perhaps these efforts had not been wholly reasonable. She had a real vocation for the theater if ever girl had, even if he had a real vocation for jobbing land. But allowance has to be made for a strong man in love. He was in sorry case, poor fellow, but her sense of duty to