"But I nevah would have done that" cried Lloyd, "if I'd have known who yoah Edwardo was, and now I've found out that it is some one that Papa Jack disapproves of, of co'se I can't carry yoah lettahs any moah."
"Oh, Princess, I thought you'd stand by me against the whole world!" sobbed Ida. "I had counted so much—just these few days he'll be here in the Valley—on seeing him up here. I didn't think you'd be unreasonable and unjust. It seems as if it would break my heart to have my only friend fail me now."
The tears were streaming down Lloyd's face, too, but she clenched her hands and shook her head stubbornly. "No, tell him he can't come heah again, and that he mustn't send any moah lettahs to my address."
Without another word Ida turned and walked out to the porch, where she stood waiting behind the bare vines that twined the pillars for Edwardo to come to her. All the pretty colour had died out of her face, and Lloyd felt in a sudden spasm of remorse that she was responsible for the tears in the beautiful eyes and the look of trouble on the face that only a little while before had been aglow with happiness. The odour of a cigarette floated in through the hall. Then Ida closed the door, and the two sat down on the step outside.
Lloyd paced up and down the long room with her hands behind her back. There was an ache in her throat. She was so miserably disappointed in Edwardo, so miserably sorry for Ida. More than all, she was miserably sorry for herself; for the friendship which she had counted one of the most beautiful things of her life lay in ruins. For a moment she doubted if she had done right to shirk the obligations it had laid upon her, and wondered if it were not a greater sacrifice than her father ought to expect her to make for him. The temptation pressed sorely upon her to go to Ida and tell her she would stand by her as she had promised, and for a few days longer, at least, be the bearer of their letters. She even started toward the door; but half-way across the room some compelling force drew her eyes toward the portrait of Amanthis, and she stood still, looking into the depths of the clear, true eyes which had given counsel to more than one troubled heart.
Years before, the old Colonel, standing with his head bowed on the mantel, had murmured, brokenly, "Oh, Amanthis, tell me what to do!" and, obedient to the silent message of that straightforward gaze, had started off through the falling snow to be reconciled to his only daughter. And now Lloyd, looking up in the same way, no longer had any doubts about her duty.
"It wouldn't be right, would it!" she murmured. "You nevah did anything you had to hide. You wouldn't stoop to anything clandestine." She straightened herself up proudly, and wiped her eyes. "Neithah will I, no mattah what it costs me not to!" Then she went on, brokenly, as if talking to a living presence: "Oh, it's so pitiful for her to be so deceived in him; for of co'se grandfathah and Papa Jack and her aunt and everybody put togethah couldn't be mistaken. And I love her so much; I wish mothah were here, or Papa Jack—but I'll promise you, Grandmothah Amanthis, I'll nevah make you ashamed of me again. I wouldn't have carried the lettahs if I had known, and you can trust me always aftah this, for evah and evah."
It seemed to Lloyd that an approving smile rested on the girlish face, and a red streak of light from the wintry sunset, stealing in through the uncurtained window, shone across the June rose at her throat till it burned for the moment with the live red of a living rose.
She slipped the cover on the harp again, and taking one more look around the room at every familiar object grown dear from years of happy associations, she closed the door softly and stole up-stairs to rejoin Mom Beck. She felt as if she had been to a funeral and had suddenly grown very old and worldly wise—years older and wiser than when she started blithely up to Locust an hour or two before.
It was late when she and Mom Beck came down-stairs again. The sunset glow had almost faded from the sky. They bolted the front door and went out the back, Mom Beck taking the key again.