"Then you did know that it was possible he would ask me to marry him," she said. "I wondered if you knew that. It makes it complete now I know that you did. So it comes to this, that you cut me out just in order to flirt with him. Thank you, Aunt Jeannie, thank you."
And then there came into Daisy's voice what Jeannie dreaded to hear; the hard tone of anger died out of it, it became gentle, and it became miserable. She sat down at Jeannie's writing-table, covering her face with her hands.
"Oh, I beseech you," she said, "cannot you undo the spell that you cast so easily? Oh, Aunt Jeannie, do, do; and I will forget all that has happened, and—and love you again. I want to do that. But I loved him; it was only quite lately I knew that, but it is so. Have you not enough? Isn't it enough that you will marry the man you love? I did not think you could be so cruel. Do you hate me, or what is it?"
Jeannie made a little hopeless gesture with her hands.
"Oh, Daisy, I didn't know that you loved him," she said. "Indeed, I did not. But, my dear, he did not love you. How could he have if he behaved as he has behaved?"
"You made him," said Daisy. "You——" Then once again anger flamed into her voice. "Ah, what a true friend you have been to me!" she said. "Were you as true a friend to Diana too?"
She had taken up one of the photographs, that which represented her and Diana together.
"Here we are together," she said, "and we thank you. Here is Diana by herself——"
And then she stopped abruptly. Her eye had fallen on the photograph of Diana which she had given only last year to Jeannie. It was signed "Diana, 1907." She drew it out of its frame.
"Aunt Jeannie," she said, quickly, "in what year did Diana die?"