amused, or terribly angry at my presumption?

"This sort of thing must stop. I cannot be meeting my darling
clandestinely any longer. My honor forbids, my manhood cries out against
it.

"But, oh, God! how the thought terrifies me that from the moment they
find out that we have met, and are lovers, they will try to part
us--tear my darling from me!"

They had met in a very ordinary manner, but to the infatuated young
lover it seemed the most ideal, most romantic of meetings. The pretty
little heiress had gone to the office of Marsh & Co. to settle her
monthly account. The old cashier was out to lunch. His assistant, Lester
Armstrong, stepped forward and attended to the matter for the pretty
young girl, surely the sweetest and daintiest that he had ever beheld.

That night he dreamed of the lovely, dimpled rosebud face, framed in a
mass of golden curls; a pair of bewildering violet eyes, and a gay,
musical voice like a chiming of silver bells, and lo! the mischief was
done. The next day the assistant cashier made the first mistake of his
life over his accounts. The old cashier, Mr. Conway, looked at him
grimly from over the tops of his gold-rimmed glasses.

"I hope you have not taken to playing cards nights, Mr. Armstrong," he
said. "They are dangerous; avoid them. Wine is still worse, and above
all, let me warn you against womankind. They are a snare and a delusion.
Avoid them, one and all, as you would a pestilence."

But the warning had come to the handsome young assistant cashier too