"Meant!" cried I. "You know well enough what I meant. I meant that it was easy enough for you to be noble and self-sacrificing, when all the time your thoughts were elsewhere. Yes, very easy for you to be patient, waiting for your own lover, when you were busy robbing me of my lover. Oh, don't speak, don't deny it! It's useless. You have done it, and you know that you have done it."
I think I expected Joyce to be crushed—I expected her to cry. I stood there panting and waiting for it. But she was neither crushed nor did she cry; she was not even angry. She stood there quietly, looking away from me out of the window, and at last she said: "You're mistaken, Meg; I never wanted to rob you of your lover. If you remember, when first I came home I told you that it was my hope such a thing might happen between you. I always thought you were too clever for the folk about here, and I thought he was clever. But you know you told me it never could be. You led me to believe you hated him, and always should hate him, because he had come to the farm to do your work. I believed it. Yes, until quite a little while ago I believed it. Then—"
"Well?" asked I, scornfully. "Then? What then?"
"Then, when I began to suspect that I might be mistaken, I resolved to go back and live with Aunt Naomi until matters were settled between you. That's what I was telling Mr. Harrod the day you came into the parlor last week."
"Oh, that's what you were telling him," cried I. "You don't say what he said to you that made you tell him that. You don't say if you also told him that you were engaged to another man."
"I didn't, because he said nothing to me to warrant it," answered my sister. "If he had I should have told him that I was not free."
"Ah, you do mean to keep your word to Frank, then?" asked I.
"I mean to keep my word to him if he wishes it," answered she, in a low voice.
Her face ought to have shamed me, but it raised the devil in me.
"Well, if you still love Frank there is no need for you to go away," said I, brutally. "Or is it because you are afraid of Mr. Harrod's peace of mind that you want to go?"