Explore "Hermia Suydam" by Gertrude Atherton on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
One day a bank clerk came up to the quiet house with a message to John Suydam. As he was leaving he met Bessie in the hall. Each did what wiser heads had done before-they fell wildly and uncompromisingly in love at first sight. How Frank Mordaunt managed to find an excuse for speaking to her he never remembered, nor how he had been transported from the hall into the dingy old drawing-room. At the end of an hour he was still there, seated on a sofa of faded brocade, and looking into the softest eyes in the world.
After that he came every evening. John Suydam knew nothing of it. Bessie, from the parlor window, watched Mordaunt come down the street and opened the front door herself; the old man, crouching over his library fire, heard not an echo of the whispers on the other side of the wall.