"
"Father, Mr. Van Berg shall not shield my short-comings," said Ida,
with crimson cheeks. "I forgot to ask about Mr. Eltinge. To tell
the truth, we were talking of old times. I met Mr. Van Berg here
last June and I made a very bad impression on him."
"And I at the same time made a worse impression on Miss Mayhew,"
added the artist.
"Well," said her father, with a doubtful smile and a puzzled glace
from one to the other, "one almost might be tempted to believe that
you had been revising your impressions."
"Mine has not been revised, but changed altogether," said Van Berg,
decisively.
"Come, father, let us go at once lest Mr. Van Berg's impressions
change again," and her mirthful glance as she gave him her hand
in parting revealed a new element in her character. She was not
developing the cloying sweetness of honey.
Chapter XLVIII. Ida's Temptation.
If Van Berg had given thought to himself that evening as he did to
Ida Mayhew he might have discovered some rather odd phenomena in
his varying mental states. Earlier in the summer he had been a
very deliberate and conscientious wooer. He had leisurely taken
counsel of his reason, judgment, and good taste; he mentally
consulted his parents, and satisfied himself that Miss Burton would
have peculiar charms for them, and so it had come to seem almost
a duty as well as a privilege to seek that young lady's hand.
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