“Oh!” Bella drew a sharp breath of relief. “When I was little I know I was a beast.”
“You told Louis Cheviot about the altar, and the patron saint; about—”
“Yes,” said Bella hastily. “It was pretty mean of me, but I was only twelve.”
“It wasn’t only when you were twelve.” Gratitude, common prudence, should have bridled Hildegarde’s tongue, but there was something of the judgment day about this hour. Hearts must needs be opened and secrets known. “It was after,” she went on, driven by this new necessity to leave nothing hidden if she was to take Bella’s help, “it was six years after—when you were eighteen. You had gone away knowing quite well how—how I was feeling about—You knew how I was feeling. Yet you could write pretty heartlessly, considering all things. That gay letter about your engagement. You could write with that insincere air of expecting me to be as happy as you were.”
“You surely see it would have been unpardonable of me to have sympathized with you. I had to assume you didn’t care. You would have done the same.”
“No, I wouldn’t.”
Bella looked at her. “That’s true,” she said, quite low. “You would have shown that you were sorry for me, even in the middle of being happy yourself. You could have done it and not hurt. But I couldn’t. I didn’t know how. The nearest I could come to it was just to pretend I thought you’d got over it—that you didn’t care any longer.”
They looked at each other a moment without speaking. Bella with quivering face glided forward.
“Dearest, dearest”—she took Hildegarde’s hand, she caught it to her breast. “You aren’t going to let him—the Other—spoil two lives!”