CHAPTER VII.

MARION RECEIVES A CALLER.

“Thank you, Marion.”

This was all that Miss Allyn said as she paused beside the two, her dearest friend and the man who was her lover. Her face was of a death-like pallor, and her eyes were gleaming, but there was nothing further to tell how terribly she was suffering.

With the utmost coolness she drew the ring from her finger and was about to hand it to him, when she changed her mind suddenly.

“No, I won’t give it back. I’ll keep it,” she said, quietly. “It will be a constant reminder of a man’s perfidy. Any time when you want the price of it let me know. You are mean enough to ask for it,” she said, with a shrug of her shoulders.

George Colebrook’s face was a study for a moment. He looked first at one of the girls and then at the other.

“You had better go,” said Miss Allyn, coolly. “You can see that you are out of place. My friends, like myself, despise a traitor.”

With a glance of hatred toward Marion, the fellow turned and fled.

The moment he was gone, Miss Allyn dropped heavily on the sofa.

“It has killed her!” cried Dollie, darting to her side.

“She has fainted. Bring some water,” was Marion’s answer.

“It is all for the best, dear; do try and think so,” urged Marion a few minutes later, when Miss Allyn opened her eyes.

Miss Allyn drew herself up slowly and looked around.

“So it is all over, my dream of love,” she said, very slowly. “Well, I guess I’ve got spunk enough to pull me through. Where’s that looking-glass, Dollie. I want to smash the pieces.”

That was the last the girls heard of Miss Allyn’s love affair. Her lover’s name was buried in oblivion from that very moment.

If Miss Allyn grieved for him, she did not show it, but, if anything, she became a trifle more sad and pessimistic.

“It would have killed me, I know,” Dollie told Marion in confidence. “Why, if Ralph should deceive me, I’d commit suicide, I’m certain.”

“Well, then, you’d be a little goose, that’s all I’ve got to say,” was Marion’s answer. “Why, any one would think to hear you, Dollie, that Ralph was the only man in the world worth having.”

“Sometimes I think he is,” said Dollie, complacently. Her faith in her lover was something that passed comprehension.

That evening both Dollie and Miss Allyn went out, Dollie with her lover and Miss Allyn on business. As Marion seated herself in a big arm-chair in the semi-darkness, she looked around their little home with a sigh of genuine pleasure.

“I almost hate to leave it,” she said aloud. “It is so sweet, so homelike and so beautifully cosy.”

There was a peal of the bell just at that very moment, which was so shrill that it brought her to her feet in a second.

“Our callers are coming early,” she thought as she went to look for the door opener, “but everything looks cosy even if we are not all settled.”

“I am looking for Miss Marion Marlowe,” said a voice on the stairs as Marion stepped out into the hall.

“I have been to her old address and they sent me here. I wonder, if I should find her, if she would be willing to see me?”

Marion’s laugh rippled out merrily at this naive request, and she held out her hand cordially to her unexpected caller.

“I am delighted to see you, Dr. Brookes,” she said, smiling, “but I am very sorry that both my friend and my sister are absent this evening. They would both have stayed at home if we had known you were coming.”

“Oh, I am not so difficult to entertain as all that,” was the jolly answer. “One young lady at a time is enough, I find, Miss Marlowe. I am not so piggish as to want a dozen.”

“They say there is safety in a multitude,” said Marion, slyly. “No danger of falling in love when there are plenty of them. It’s the monopoly of one that proves fatal, they tell me.”

“So you think falling in love a fatality, do you?” asked the young man, quickly. “Well, if that is the case, I confess that I’m a fatalist.”

“It has fatal consequences, I have discovered,” said Marion, half sadly, “although I must admit that I speak from observation and not experience.”

“A confession that I am glad to hear you make, Miss Marlowe,” said her caller almost seriously; “for most of the women that men meet nowadays are either just recovering from some heart malady or at the actual crisis of the disease, or else, what is worse, they have so thoroughly recovered from some violent attack as to render them immune from ever having another.”

“Poor things! I pity them,” said Marion, laughing, “but I can fancy that none of the three classes would afford very desirable companions. Still, we are all liable to infection of that kind,” she added, as she offered him a chair, “and up to the present time no one has produced a preventive.”

“No, nor an antidote,” was the answer, in the same serious voice, “but now tell me, Miss Marlowe, about your plans for the future.”

He spoke with so much sympathetic interest that Marion did not dream of resenting it; rather, it seemed most natural for her to sit there and tell him all about her plans.

He was to be a physician and she a nurse. They had many hopes and aspirations in common.

The evening passed so quickly that Marion was astonished when at ten o’clock the young man rose to leave her.

“I shall arrange to come over to Charity often,” he said at parting. “I know several of the doctors there, so I can do so easily.”

“I hope I shall like it,” said Marion, soberly. “It seems such a noble profession to be caring for the sick and suffering.”

“It is terribly hard work, though,” said Mr. Brookes, somewhat discouragingly, “and I wish it was almost any other hospital than Charity.”

Marion was about to reply, when she heard Miss Allyn coming up the stairs.

She bit her lips with amusement as she pictured what was about to follow.

She had not told either Miss Allyn or Dollie that she knew this young man, so she was prepared for something like a scene from Miss Allyn.

“Good-night, Miss Marlowe,” said young Brookes, holding out his hand.

“Good-night,” Marion answered, her lips curving into a smile, “and I do hope you will keep your promise about coming to Charity.”

“I will, indeed,” said the young man, softly. The next moment he turned and confronted Miss Allyn.

“Miss Allyn! Alma! Is it possible?” he cried in astonishment.

“Hello, Reggie, what the mischief are you doing here?” was the answer.

Then as Miss Allyn caught sight of Marion, she added promptly: “Oh, I see, you are making love to the noblest girl in creation!”