"Not that much for anybody—much less for Lord Manister, and least of all for myself! Now don't you be too good to me, Ruth; if you are you'll only make me feel ungrateful, and I shall run away, because I'm not going to tell you another word about what's over and done with. I can't! I have got over the whole thing, but it has been a sickener. It makes me sick to think about it. I don't want ever to speak of it again."
"I understand," said Ruth; but there was disappointment in her look and tone, and she added, "I should like to have heard the truth, though; and no one can tell it me but you."
"I thank Heaven for that!" cried Christina piously. "The version out there was that he proposed to me and I accepted him, and then he bolted without even saying good-by. It's true that he didn't say good-by; the rest is not true. But you must just make it do."
Her face was scarlet with the shame of it all; but there was no sign of weakness in the curling lips. She spoke bitterly, but not at all sadly, and her next words were still more suggestive of a wound to the vanity rather than to the heart.
"Does Erskine know?"
"Not a word."
"Honestly?"
"Quite honestly; at least I have never mentioned it to him, and I don't think anybody else has, or he would have mentioned it to me."
"Oh, Herbert wouldn't say anything. Herbert's very close. But—don't you two tell each other everything, Ruth?"
The young girl looked incredulous; the married woman smiled.