Again the piteous echo of Blanche Carbury's phrases! The laboured mimicry of her ideas!
Justine looked anxiously at her friend. It seemed horribly false not to mention her own talk with Amherst, yet she felt it wiser to feign ignorance, since Bessy could never be trusted to interpret rightly any departure from the conventional.
"Please tell me what has happened," she said at length.
Bessy, with a smile, released her hand. "John has gone back to the life he prefers—which I take to be a hint to me to do the same."
Justine hesitated again; then the pressure of truth overcame every barrier of expediency. "Bessy—I ought to tell you that I saw Mr. Amherst in town the day I went to Philadelphia. He spoke of going away for a time...he seemed unhappy...but he told me he was coming back to see you first—" She broke off, her clear eyes on her friend's; and she saw at once that Bessy was too self-engrossed to feel any surprise at her avowal. "Surely he came back?" she went on.
"Oh, yes—he came back!" Bessy sank into the cushions, watching the firelight play on her diamond chain as she repeated the restless gesture of lifting it up and letting it slip through her fingers.
"Well—and then?"
"Then—nothing! I was not here when he came."
"You were not here? What had happened?"
"I had gone over to Blanche Carbury's for a day or two. I was just leaving when I heard he was coming back, and I couldn't throw her over at the last moment."