“Now you’re making fun of me,” she said, turning away. “I think it’s very unkind.”
Travers Gladwin felt a sharp pang of remorse and hated himself for his break. In his eagerness to repair the wound, he stepped to the young girl’s side and said with great seriousness:
“I wouldn’t hurt you in any way for the world.”
Helen looked up at him and read the soul of sincerity and sympathy in his eyes. She was both reassured and embarrassed by the intensity of his look.
“Really?” she managed to murmur, backing away and sitting down again.
The mention of Mr. Hogg had inflamed Whitney Barnes’s curiosity, and he desired to know more of that unknown.
“Well, I don’t see what Mr. Hogg has to do with it,” he spoke up.
“Why, Auntie insists upon my marrying him.”
Helen blurted this out involuntarily