rol pleadingly.

Connie stepped to the doorway, then paused and looked back at them.
Sudden illumination came to her as she scanned their faces, the man's
clear-cut, determined, eager--Carol's shy, and scared, and--hopeful. She
turned quickly back toward her sister, pain darkening her eyes. Carol
was the last of all the girls,--it would leave her alone,--and he was
too old for her. Her lips quivered a little, and her face shadowed more
darkly. But they did not see it. The man's eyes were intent on Carol's
lovely features, and Carol was studying her slender fingers. Connie drew
a long breath, and looked down upon her sister with a great protecting
tenderness in her heart. She wanted to catch her up in her strong young
arms and carry her wildly out of the room--away from the man who sat
there--waiting for her.

Carol lifted her face at that moment, and turned slowly toward Mr. Duke.
Connie saw her eyes. They were luminous.

Connie's tense figure relaxed then, and she turned at once toward the
door. "I am going," she said in a low voice. But she looked back again
before she closed the door after her. "Carol," she said in a whisper,
"you--you're a darling. I--I've always thought so."

Carol did not hear her,--she did not hear the door closing behind
her--she had forgotten Connie was there.

Mr. Duke stood up and walked quickly across the room and Carol rose to
meet him. He put his arms about her, strongly, without hesitating.

"Carol," he said, "my little song-bird,"--and he laughed, but very
tenderly, "would you like to know how to make me say what you know I
want to say?"

"I--I--" she began tremulously, clasping her hands against his breast,
and looking intently, as if fascinated, at his square firm chin so very
near her eyes. She had never observed it so near at hand before. She
thought it was a lovely chin,--in another man she would have called it
distinctly "bossy."

"You _would_ try to make me, when you know I've been gritting my teeth
for years, waiting for you to get grown up. You've been awfully slow
about it, Carol, and I've been in such a hurry for you."

She rested limply in his arms now, breathing in little broken sighs, not
trying to speak.

"You have known it a long time, haven't you? And I thought I was hiding
it so cleverly." He drew her closer in his arms. "You are too young for
me, Carol," he said regretfully. "I am very old."

"I--I like 'em old," she whispered shyly.

With one hand he dr