"Richmond—Richmond Blake—" and her voice broke. She threw herself forward upon Sabrina's shoulder and clasped her with shaking hands. "He has given me up, Sabrina," she moaned, between her sobs. "It is over. He has given me up."
Sabrina led her to the great chair by the window, and forced her into it. Then she knelt beside her and drew the girl's head again to her shoulder. She patted her cheek with little regular beats that had a rhythmic soothing.
"There, there, dear," she kept saying. "There, there!"
Presently Clelia choked down her sobs, and raised her face, tempestuous in its marks of grief.
"I'd just as soon tell you," she said, with a broken hardness, a composure struggled for and then lost. "I'd just as soon anybody would know it. I don't feel as if I'd any use for myself, now he don't prize me. Well, Sabrina, he don't want me any more."
"You sure, dear?" asked Sabrina. "You better be sure."
"We got talking about the land," said Clelia, in a high voice.
"The ten-acre lot?"
"Yes. I said to him: 'There's that man from New York. He's offered you two hundred dollars for it. Why don't you take it?'"
"What's the man from New York want it for?" asked Sabrina, with what seemed a trifling irrelevance.