"It is perfectly safe to talk."
Then Cecilia, rather more circumstantially than Pendleton, told her of the triangular quarrel. "And now," she said, "Marshall is absurd enough to think I mind his dangling after that Mrs. Halley! She's welcome to him! Did he happen to say where Mr. Flood had gone?"
"He said he had gone west to shoot things," Rosamund told her, and Cecilia became very thoughtful. Later, while Rosamund was undressing, she came into her room, and said,
"Rose, the Whartons have asked me to go on their yacht to the Mediterranean. If you are sure you will not need me for a month or two I believe I'll go."
They talked for a while of plans, with no mention of Flood. Rosamund had small difficulty in adding the sum of two and two; it was plain enough that her sister had accepted the hint of the defeat of any hopes she might have had, and now was aiming somewhere else; but Cecilia, in a blue negligée, her hair down and her cheeks still delicately flushed, looking intently at the toe of her silver slipper, was bewitchingly pretty, and she had not the heart to laugh. When Rosamund announced her intention of leaving New York next morning, Cecilia, in turn, ignored any suspicions she might have had. She even offered to keep Yetta for a week, to take her to the master who was to hear her voice, to find the suitable governess and to send her back in the governess's charge before she sailed. She had taken a strange liking to the girl; perhaps the adoration in the black eyes had something to do with it.
Then, at last, Rosamund was alone. Do we ever, she wondered, look back upon our doubts and misunderstandings, when once they are dissolved, with anything but scorn and disgust for our own stupidity, our blindness? Pendleton's part in the affair was too mean to be given a second thought. Such people, she supposed, there must be, content to feed upon the crumbs of society, winning their way by their very silliness, which amuses more by its vociferous nonsense than by inherent wit. She could dismiss him as a meddler, knowing him too well to credit him with worse intentions; he was not bad at heart, and she knew that he would not have been merely spiteful toward herself. He had meant her no harm. It was her own part in it, and above all Ogilvie's, that were hard to think about. It was not for the woman to move with courage high enough to overcome misunderstandings; it was Ogilvie who had failed there. He at least had known what Pendleton had said, while she had been unaware of it. After that hour of wordless revelation, she asked herself, how could he have doubted her? In their walks and drives she had been so sincerely herself with him, had given him so many opportunities of knowing her character—even, she blushingly told herself, of knowing her heart. Was it possible that any man, after that, could so misunderstand her as to believe her capable of such deception? How could he have believed her engaged to Flood? Yet she realized that if he did indeed believe it, he would not have pressed his own claims. Whatever his feeling for her, he would not have tried to win her from the friend whom he placed so high, whom he knew to be so worthy a man, for whom he had told her that he would make any sacrifice. She was sorely wounded; yet there was that quality in her blood which refused to be vanquished. It would have been natural enough to scorn him for his doubt, to punish him for his neglect, to condemn him for his lack of courage, when a word or two, scarcely a question, would have made everything clear between them. To blame him, she told herself, would be the easier way. But her courage was higher than that. Beyond every other consideration, she knew very well that she must give precedence to the love that was in his heart and hers.
She recalled Mother Cary's words, "I reckon there's a door o' distrust most of us has to pass through, before we can stand in the land where there's only content, an' love, an' trust." Her heart warmed anew to the wise, tender old woman whose wisdom was large and loving enough to illumine every shadow.
She fell asleep pondering upon it all, and carried the same thoughts with her to the train next morning. She left New York before Yetta was awake, having said farewell to a very drowsy and very charming Cecilia.
It seemed strange that here the busy life of the city could be rushing on, crowding and grinding and shrieking, while there, in her mountains, as she knew so well, only quiet stretches of snow and lines of black pines and bare treetops, only the sun and the stars, only the few slowly moving people, an old white mare bringing home a tired man, the call of the man or boy crossing the fields, the lowing of cattle from the barnyards—only these made up the world! Here every second was crowded with activity; the deeper workings of human hearts were drowned in noise. There, nothing ever hastened; life matured normally, like the winter wheat; grew slowly, and to a largeness impossible in the cities.
She had forgotten that the trains, in winter, were less frequent. She missed the last one, and had to spend the night in Baltimore, and make a late start the next morning. She had been thinking, thinking, during every waking moment since the hour of Pendleton's disclosure, and in the station she bought an armful of papers and magazines; even pictures of criminals, financiers and actresses were better company than her own thoughts! There was no Pullman car on the train in winter, and she welcomed the changing company of the day-coach; but passengers happened to be few, and she was soon forced to take up her papers.