“Alas!” said Irving, “I know Betsy. She has been driven out of my father’s house—my house—without first talking to me; without putting her good arms around my neck—” The speaker’s voice stopped short; his shoulders were again convulsed.
Mrs. Bruce stood in the same spot, watching him with miserable eyes, wringing her hands.
“Don’t—don’t say such things, Irving. Don’t feel so. I’ll—I’ll do anything. I’ll find her and—and apologize—I was mistaken—I’ll say so.”
Irving made a gesture of repression. She gazed at him, mute and miserable.
At last he turned and faced her. She was a figure to excite compassion in that moment, as she met the regard of his reddened eyes.
“It is too late for that, Madama. The break has come. It can’t be mended. Betsy would never go in this way if there were a possibility of her coming back.”
A sense of her own loss came to Mrs. Bruce with the kinder tone of Irving’s voice.
“I wish to speak to you also of another matter; of the cause of your excitement last night, before we part.”
“Part!” she repeated acutely.