"
"But how about your heart, Mr. Van Berg?"
"My heart overflows with gratitude to you," he said promptly, but
with rising color; "and as I said when you rescued me, so now I
vow again, I dedicate my life to you. I do not ask you to forget
the past all at once--I do not ask you to forget it at all--but only
to let me aid you in taking the bitterness out of those memories
that now are destroying as sweet and beneficent a life as God ever
gave. I have suspected that you had some unselfish guile in that
last promise you obtained from me, but I shall be loyal to the
promise I intended to make, and which was in my mind; I shall be
loyal to the promise I made you at first, to win you if I could,
and I shall wait till I can."
"What, then, will Ida Mayhew do?" she asked looking him full in
the face.
He colored still more deeply, but meeting her searching gaze without
blenching, he said, firmly and quietly: "She will always do what
is right and noble, God bless her!"
Miss Burton appeared a little perplexed and troubled for a moment,
and then said, slowly: "I called you my friend last July, and when
I speak in the mood I was in then I mean all that I say.
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