CHAPTER VII
LOVE AND DUTY
The pretty Irish maid nodded and smiled with such a sympathetic look as
she ushered Ned into the cosy back parlor, he wondered if it meant
anything. Could she have guessed Betty's secret? She might give him a
hint that would lift the fear from his heart.
He smiled back into her laughing eyes and began awkwardly:
"Oh, I say, Peggy----"
She dropped a pretty courtesy:
"Yiss-sor?"
Somehow it wouldn't work. The words refused to come. Love was too big
and sweet and sacred. It couldn't be hinted at to a third person. And so
he merely stammered:
"Will you--er--please--tell Miss Betty I'm here?"
"Yiss-sor!" Peggy giggled.
He was glad to be rid of her. He drew his handkerchief, mopped the
perspiration from his brow and sat down by the open window to wait. His
heart was pounding. He looked about the room with vague longing. He had
spent many a swift hour of pain and joy in this room. The sight and
sound of her had grown into his very life--he couldn't realize how
intimately and how hopelessly until this moment of parting perhaps
forever.
The portrait of her mother hung over the mantel--a life-size oil
painting by a noted French artist, the same brilliant laughing eyes, the
same deep golden brown hair, its wayward ringlets playing loosely about
her fine forehead and shell-like ears.
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