“Then he didn’t send for you?”
“Corrigan did that, dearie.”
“You—you knew Corrigan before—before you came here?”
“You can guess intelligently, can’t you?”
“Corrigan planned it all?”
“All.” Hester watched as the girl bowed her head and sobbed convulsively.
“What a brazen, crafty and unprincipled thing Trevison must think me!”
Hester reached out a hand and laid it on the girl’s. “I—there was a time when I would have done murder to have him think of me as he thinks of you, dearie. He isn’t for me, though, and I can’t spoil any woman’s happiness. There’s little enough—but I’m not going to philosophize. I was going away without telling you this. I don’t know why I am telling it now. I always was a little soft. But if you hadn’t spoken as you did a while ago in that crowd—taking Trevison’s end—I—I think you’d never have known. Somehow, it seemed you deserved him, dearie. And I couldn’t bear to—to think of him facing any more disappointment. He—he took it so—”
The girl looked up, to see the woman’s eyes filling with a luminous mist. A quick conception of what this all meant to the woman thrilled the girl. She got up and walked to the woman’s side. “I’m so sorry, Hester,” she said as her arms stole around the other’s neck.