“Gloria!” he cried again.  “Gloria!”

“The—­the bacon!” gasped Gloria.  “It’s burning——­”

She freed herself, and while he let her go he stood watching her with the new look in his eyes.  Scarlet-faced she flashed her look at him from across the table.  Then she fled to the stove and retrieved the burning bacon as though here were the one matter of transcendent importance.  King began to laugh, his laughter as joyous as a boy’s.

“Gloria——­”

“That’s five times you’ve said ‘Gloria,’” she informed him hurriedly.  “And——­Please, Mark,” as he moved toward her.  “And you haven’t read papa’s letter yet.  And—­and I’m dying to know what is in that funny package.  Aren’t you?”

“If I’m dying at all,” he told her gravely, though he found a smile to answer her own—­and two very serious smiles they were—­“it is of quite another complaint.  And this time——­”

“But please, Mark!  I am here all alone—­with you—­and——­”

“I know.  I haven’t forgotten.  But, Gloria——­”

They both started to a sudden sound outside, a scuffling on the porch.  Involuntarily Gloria, prone to nervous alarm in her overwrought condition, moved hastily back toward him from whom just now she had escaped.  They glanced toward the sound; they saw at the window the puckered and perplexed face of the “judge”; they were just in time to see a big hand grasp him by the shoulder and yank him out of sight.  They heard Summerling expostulate; they heard Jim Spalding’s far from gentle voice cursing him.

King understood, at least in part, what must lie under Gloria’s look of distress.  Surely circumstance had placed her in an equivocal position to-night.  Summerling was the type to blab; he was in no charitable frame of mind; he had found her alone here with men, had come to marry her to one man, and now had seen her in the arms of another.  There was but one answer, even to Mark King.

“Some time you are going to marry me, Gloria,” he said gravely.  “Why not now?”

“It sounds like—­like an advertisement, Mark,” she laughed somewhat wildly.

“Poor little kid,” he muttered, seeing how she trembled.  “But, Gloria, why not?  Some time you are going to give yourself to me, aren’t you, dear?  While this man is still here, won’t you let him marry us?  It will give me the right to shut that fool Gratton’s mouth for him and——­Oh, Gloria, my dear, my dear——­”

She stood staring at him with wide eyes.  He pleaded with her.

“Will you, Gloria?”

And then from lips which did not smile he heard the very faint but no longer evasive “Yes.”

“Now, Gloria?”

“Yes, Mark.  If you are sure that you want me.”  She spoke humbly; at the instant she was humble.  “But,” she added hastily, “still you haven’t read poor papa’s letter.  He was very anxious.  Let me go a minute, Mark.  I am going upstairs.  I—­I want to phone to mamma first.  And while I am gone you can read papa’s letter, and—­and——­” Her face was hot with blushes.