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Wickersham was from Brookford, the same town from which the Huntingtons came, and, when a young and handsome girl, having social ambitions, had married Aaron Wickersham when he was but a clerk in the banking-house of Wentworth & Son. And, be it said, she had aided him materially in advancing his fortunes. She was a handsome woman, and her social ambitions had grown.
It was a cry of anguish. Keith's heart sank like lead. For the first time in his life he had a presentiment. Lois Huntington would die, and he would never see her again. Despair took hold of him. Keith could stand it no longer. He went to Brookford.
Her greeting was a cordial one, and Lois was soon confiding to her her trouble; how she had met an old friend after many years, and then how a contretemps had occurred. She told of his writing her, and of her failure to answer his letters, and how her aunt had refused to allow him to come to Brookford to see them. Mrs. Lancaster listened with interest. "My dear, there was nothing in that.
"You must go to her," she said. "Yes," said Keith. "I shall. I wish you would come." "Oh, I wish I could! Poor little thing!" she sighed. Two days after that Keith walked into the hotel at Brookford. The clerk recognized him as he appeared, and greeted him cordially.
"Lois I have come " he began, and stopped. She held out her hand and tried to sit up. Keith took her hand softly, as if it were a rose, and closing his firmly over it, fell on one knee beside her chair. "Don't try to sit up," he said gently. "I went to Brookford as soon as I heard of it " he began, and then placed his other hand on hers, covering it with his firm grasp.
It was from Brookford that the decree had come that had doomed him to a life of loneliness and exile. A desire seized him to see the place. Abby Brooke had been living a few years before. She might be living now. As the Doctor descended from the cars, he was met by Keith, who told him that the patient was the daughter of General Huntington the little girl he had known so long ago.
A gesture and nod completed the sentence. "But I am not a New York man," said Keith. "Oh, you are getting to be a very fair counterfeit," said the old lady, half grimly. Lois was very ill. She had been under a great strain in New York, and had finally broken down. Among other items of interest that Keith gleaned was that Dr. Locaman, the resident physician at Brookford, was a suitor of Lois.
Keith's eyes fell on Dave Dennison, where he stood on the outer edge of the crowd. His face was sphinx-like; but his bosom heaved twice, and Keith knew that two men waited to meet Wickersham. As the crowd melted away, whispering among themselves, Keith crossed over and laid a rose on General Huntington's grave. Keith had been making up his mind for some time to go to Brookford.
The General, on his arrival in New York, was full of his visit to Brookford and of Lois. "There is a girl after my own heart," he declared to Gordon, with enthusiasm. "Why don't you go down there and get that girl?" Gordon put the question aside with a somewhat grim look. He was very busy, he said. His plans were just ripening, and he had no time to think about marrying.
He wondered if life would open for him again. When a man wonders about this, life has already opened. By the time he reached New Leeds, he had already made up his mind to write and ask Miss Abby for an invitation to Brookford, and he wrote his father a full account of the girl he had known as a child, over which the old General beamed. He forgave people toward whom he had hard feelings.
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