Williams again took his chair, but Rita said, "I have given you my promise. I—I am—I fear I am ill. Please excuse me for the rest of the evening and—and leave me, I beg you."
Williams took his leave, and Rita went into the sitting room, where father, mother, and Tom were waiting for the verdict.
"You are saved," said Rita, as if she were announcing dinner.
"My daughter! my own dear child! God will bless you!" exclaimed the tender mother, hurrying to embrace the cause of her joy.
"Don't touch me!" said Rita. "I—I—God help me! I—I fear—I—hate you." She turned to the stairway and went to her own room. For hours she sat by the window, gazing into the street, but toward morning she lighted a candle and told Dic the whole piteous story in a dozen pages of anguish and love.
After receiving Sukey's letter, Dic left home for a few days to engage horses to take east with him in the spring. He did not return until late in the afternoon of the day before Christmas.
On the morning of that day—the day before Christmas—Jasper Yates, Sukey's father, came to Billy Little's store in great agitation. Tom Bays had been there the day before and had imparted to Billy the news of Rita's forthcoming wedding. She had supposed that Dic would tell him and had not written; but Dic was away from home and had not received her letter.
I cannot describe to you the overpowering grief this announcement brought to the tender bachelor heart. It stunned him, crushed him, almost killed him; but he tried to bear up manfully under the weight of his grief. He tried, ah, so hard, not to show his suffering, and Maxwelton's braes, was sung all day and was played nearly all night; but the time had come to Billy when even music could not soothe him. There was a dry, hard anguish at his heart that all the music of heaven or of earth could not soften. Late in the night he shut his piano in disgust and sat before the fire during the long black hours without even the comfort of a tear.
When Tom imparted the intelligence of Rita's wedding, he also asked Billy for a loan of four hundred dollars. As an inducement, he explained that he had forged the name of Mr. Wallace to a note calling for that sum, and had negotiated the note at an Indianapolis bank. Rita's marriage would settle the Williams theft, but the matter of the forgery called for immediate adjustment in cash. Billy refused the loan; but he gave Tom fifty dollars and advised him to leave the state.