first time he had ever addressed her by her
given name and without the "Miss"--"you know I love you--or you ought to
know it. You know I want you to be my wife. Say that you will, and then
I shall be free to tell you all my troubles and to take your advice in
all of them. Say that you love me, Barbara! Say that you will marry
me!"

All this was in contravention of Guilford Duncan's carefully laid plans,
as a declaration of love is apt to be, so long as women are fascinating
and men are human. He had intended to put the thought of his love for
Barbara into her unsuspecting mind by ingenious "trick and device." It
had been his plan presently to escort her to church, to the concerts
that now and then held forth at the Athenaeum, to Mrs. Hallam's for a
game of croquet, to Mrs. Galagher's for the little dances that that
gracious gentlewoman gave now and then, even in the heat of a southern
Illinois summer. He had even chartered a steamboat, and planned to give
a picnic in the Kentucky woodlands below Cairo, to which he should
escort Barbara. He had thought in these ways to set the tongues of all
the gossips wagging, and thus to force upon Barbara the thought of his
love for her.

All was now spoiled, as he thought, when he so precipitately declared
his love there in the vine-clad porch.

Barbara was obviously surprised. Duncan could not quite make out whether
she was shocked or not, whether his declaration of love pleased or
distressed her.

For she made no answer whatever. Instead she nervously plucked
honeysuckles and still more nervously let them fall from her hands.

Duncan was standing now, and in torture lest he had spoiled all by his
precipitancy. He waited, as patiently as he could, for the girl's
answer, but it came not. Her silence seemed ominous to him. It seemed to
mean that she was shocked and offended by a declaration of love, for
which he had not in any wise prepared her.

But Duncan was a man of action. It was not his habit to accept defeat
without challenging it and demanding its reasons. So presently he
advanced, passed his arm around Barbara's waist, and gently caressed her
forehead, as a father or an older brother might have done.

She accepted the caress in that spirit, seemingly, and then she turned
toward the hall door, saying:

"Good-night!"

But Duncan was not to be so baffled. He had blundered upon a declaration
of love--as most men do who really love--and he did not intend to go
away wi