The Fatal Glove | Page 9

throat.

"I promised him that I would try and fulfil his requirements."
"That you would try! Yes. And that was equal to giving an unqualified
assent. You know the conditions of the will, I believe?"
"I do. If I marry without your consent under the age of twenty-one, I
forfeit my patrimony. And I am nineteen now. And I shall not marry
without your consent."
"Margie, you must marry Mr. Linmere. Do not hope to do differently. It
is your duty. He has lived single all these years waiting for you. He will
be kind to you, and you will be happy. Prepare to receive him with
becoming respect."
Mr. Trevlyn considered his duty performed, and went out for his
customary walk.
At dinner Mr. Linmere arrived. Margie met him with cold composure.
He scanned her fair face and almost faultless form, with the eye of a
connoisseur, and congratulated himself on the fortune which was to
give him, such a bride without the perplexity of a wooing. She was
beautiful and attractive, and he had feared she might be ugly, which
would have been a dampener on his satisfaction. True, her wealth
would have counter-balanced any degree of personal deformity; but Mr.
Paul Linmere admired beauty, and liked to have pretty things around
him.
To tell the truth, he was sadly in need of money. It was fortunate that
his old friend, Mr. Harrison, Margie's dead father, had taken it into his
head to plight his daughter's troth to him while she was yet a child. Mr.
Harrison had been an eccentric man; and from the fact that in many
points of religious belief he and Mr. Paul Linmere agreed, (for both
were miserable skeptics,) he valued him above all other men, and
thought his daughter's happiness would be secured by the union he had
planned.
Linmere had been abroad several years, and had led a very reckless,
dissipated life. Luxurious by nature, lacking in moral rectitude, and

having wealth at his command, he indulged himself unrestrained; and
when at last he left the gay French capital and returned to America, his
whole fortune, with exception of a few thousands, was dissipated. So
he needed a rich wife sorely, and was not disposed to defer his
happiness.
He met Margie with empressement, and bowed his tall head to kiss the
white hand she extended to him. She drew it away coldly--something
about the man made her shrink from him.
"I am so happy to meet you again. Margie, and after ten years of
separation! I have thought so much and so often of you."
"Thank you, Mr. Linmere."
"Will you not call me Paul?" he asked, in a subdued voice, letting his
dangerous eyes, full of light and softness, rest on her.
An expression of haughty surprise swept her face. She drew back a
pace.
"I am not accustomed to address gentlemen--mere acquaintances--by
their Christian names, sir."
"But in this case, Margie? Surely the relations existing between us will
admit of such a familiarity," he said, seating himself, while she
remained standing coldly near.
"There are no relations existing between us at present, Mr. Linmere,"
she answered, haughtily; "and if, in obedience to the wishes of the dead,
we should ever become connected in name, I beg leave to assure you in
the beginning that you will always be Mr. Linmere to me."
A flush of anger mounted to his cheek; he set his teeth, but outwardly
he was calm and subdued. Anger, just at present, was impolitic.
"I hope to win your love, Margie; I trust I shall," he answered, sadly
enough to have aroused almost any woman's pity; but some subtle

instinct told Margie he was false to the core.
But all through the evening he was affable and complaisant and
forbearing. She made no attempt to conceal her dislike of him.
Concealments were not familiar to Margie's nature. She was frank and
open as the day.
Mr. Linmere's fascinations were many and varied. He had a great deal
of adaptation, and made himself agreeable to every one. He had
traveled extensively, was a close observer, and had a retentive memory.
Mr. Trevlyn was charmed with him. So was Alexandrine Lee, a friend
of Margie's, a rival belle, who accidentally (?) dropped in to spend the
evening.
Mr. Linmere played and sang with exquisite taste and skill--he was a
complete master of the art, and, in spite of herself, Margie listened to
him with a delight that was almost fascination, but which subsided the
moment the melody ceased.
He judged her by the majority of women he had met, and finding her
indifferent, he sought to rouse her jealousy by flirting with Miss Lee,
who was by no means adverse to his attentions. But Margie hailed the
transfer with a