Mina started, her eyes wide-open in surprise at this heroic measure.
"I must never see him—if I can help it. Anyhow I must never see him at Blent. That's the only way I can endure it."
"Never see him! Never have him at Blent!" Mina was trying to sort out the state of things which would result. It was pretty plain what had happened; Cecily had felt the need of doing something; here it was. Mina's sympathies, quick to move, darted out to Harry. "Think what it'll mean to him never to see Blent!" she cried.
"To him? Nothing, nothing! Why, you yourself came home just now saying that we were nothing to him! Blent's nothing to him now. It's for my own sake that I've said he mustn't come."
"You've begged him not to come?"
"I've told him not to come," said Cecily haughtily. "If it's his, let him take it. If it's mine, I can choose who shall come there. Don't you see, don't you see? How can I ever cheat myself into thinking it's mine by right, if I see Harry there?" She paused a moment. "And if you'd thrown yourself at a man's head, and he'd refused you, would you want to have him about?"
"N—no," said Mina, but rather hesitatingly; uncomfortable situations are to some natures better than no situations at all. "No, of course not," she added more confidently, after she had spent a moment in bracing up her sense of what was seemly.
"So I've ended it, I've ended everything. I posted my letter just before you came in, and he'll get it to-morrow. And now, Mina, I'm going back to Blent." She threw herself into an arm-chair, leaning back in a
sudden weariness after the excited emotion with which she had declared her resolve. Mina sat on the other side of the table looking at her, and after a moment's looking suddenly began to sob.
"It's too miserable," she declared in wrathful woe. "Why couldn't he have said nothing about it and just married you? Oh, I hate it all, because I love you both. I know people think I'm in love with him, but I'm not. It's both of you, it's the whole thing; and now it never, never can go straight. If he got Blent back now by a miracle, it would be just as bad."