"There is one thing I want to ask you before I go away and this may be our last talk together. Why—why have you been so bitterly cruel to me?"
He looked at her but did not answer.
"At first," she went on, "I thought it was from something hard in your nature,—or because you hated me,—or bore something up against me, I could not tell what. But since we have been together over Philip, and I have seen how gentle you are with him, it does not seem that you could ever have been wantonly cruel, nor that you—quite—hated me. What was the reason?"
"Miss Margaret! Oh, Miss Margaret!"
It was Mammy Cely's voice, and at this moment her rotund form appeared at the entrance to the arbor.
"Here's a letter fur you."
"Will you tell me some time?" she asked insistently as the woman came nearer. She might never have so good an opportunity again.
"Mr. Harcourt's waitin' fur you, Miss Margaret."
Richard De Jarnette's face hardened.
"There is nothing to tell," he said.