"Do you suppose she gave the letter to him?"
"I am afraid she must have. You see, the engagement has been announced everywhere, and they sit together in church. The neighbors give little companies for them, and Mr. Greaves acts as if he had full right to her."
Ralston dashed the letter to the floor. "Then she is weak and false!" he cried in a passion. "I could wait with very little encouragement, so long as it was waiting. We are both young, and I have my fortune to make. But when she engages herself to another, when—Mrs. Jettson said there was talk of a marriage in the spring! Even if she had written to explain—I think I could have stood being given up by her if she had said it was a mistake, and she had found she was over-hasty. It was sudden—done in those two days; but then I had seen her frequently during her visit to Mrs. Jettson, and I was sure she cared for me. She had a kind of shy way—looking back and forth; do you remember it? But perhaps the glances are only meant for a lover's eyes," smiling faintly in spite of the anger. "Either she loved me or she was a coquette."
"She is not a coquette!" exclaimed Jaqueline decisively. "And she never had a real lover until—" Then the girl stopped and flushed.
"What I can't understand is her accepting this man if she loved me, taking his caresses and his plans for a life together—"
"Oh, he isn't the caressing sort!" interrupted Jaqueline. "And yet I don't see how she could, if she loved you. I wouldn't have been forced to accept him. I wouldn't have promised anybody. I would just have waited. But Grandfather Floyd is very arbitrary, and when he makes up his mind, there is no relenting. Oh, I am afraid you can't understand! You don't know him."
"The time is past when a woman is compelled to marry a man she doesn't want," he said with an angry sneer. "I know the old adage says that a continual dropping will wear away a stone. But this has been such a little while. There may be shaly natures that the dropping disintegrates rapidly. And you girls never talked with her about it, which seems strange to me."
"We scarcely saw her alone. And we were strictly forbidden to speak of it."
"Then he must have felt afraid of your influence."
Ralston looked eagerly at the girl, as if he was searching for some ground of hope.