'Oh, you don't understand!' Lucy moaned; 'you don't know the worst. It had to be done secretly: no one must know. It would ruin him for life if it were known.'
'You don't mean that they haven't told anyone? that they are trying to hush it up, and not let the tutors know?'
Lucy moaned.
'Oh, what folly is this! I am sure Eric is at the bottom of it.'
'Yes; it was Eric made me promise I wouldn't tell, and I have told you,' Lucy murmured helplessly.
'Of course you have told me. Having told me so much, you must tell me all—you must keep nothing back.'
And so Lucy sat up in the bed with her arms round Pamela—she couldn't have told her without having something to cling to—and told her her wretched little story, and how she had pledged herself to keep this young man's secret.
'What do you think I ought to do?' she asked weakly, when the recital was finished.
'Do?' said Pamela, but she didn't answer the girl's question. She disengaged herself from her clinging arms, and she paced up and down the room, her feet dabbling in the water on the floor. She stopped presently in her walk, her chin up, and her face set with the light of a high resolve upon it towards the light that was breaking in at the east window; she might have been reciting that Greek play. 'Do?' she repeated, and her face was hard and cold and tired. The old weary look had come back to it—no wonder; it was three o'clock in the morning. 'Do? Why, go to bed, of course!'
She refused to say another word about Lucy's secret. She helped her back to her room, and put her to bed, and tucked her in, and drew back the curtains, that the light of the new day might drive away the ghosts of the night.