"Oh!" said Miss Kling, as Nattie closed the door behind her, "was that
Mr. Stanwood who came home with you?"
"Yes;" Nattie answered, briefly. "I should hardly have thought Miss
Archer would have allowed it!" remarked Miss Kling, with a sneeze.
"I don't know why she should have forbidden it!" replied Nattie, coldly, yet looking somewhat startled. Poor Nattie's nerves were decidedly unstrung to-night.
"You do not mean to say that you are ignorant of what every one else knows?" queried Miss Kling, with a malicious sparkle in her eyes; "that they are just the same as engaged."
Nattie turned a very pale face towards her.
"I—I think you are mistaken," she faltered.
"Mistaken! no indeed!" said Miss Kling, positively; "I should think your own eyes might tell you that! Why, Mrs. Simonson says, Miss Archer has thought of nobody but him since he came into the house, and that anybody can tell he is in love with her, from his actions and the attentions he pays her, and Celeste told me the same thing, long ago. But I suppose Miss Archer is willing he should come home with you. She isn't, of course, jealous of you!"
There was a sneering emphasis in Miss Kling's last words, that made them anything but complimentary, as Nattie felt; but saying only, in a voice she vainly tried to steady,
"You may be right," she went into her own room, and locked the door behind her.
She knew now! knew what that first romantic acquaintance, that dejection at the companionship lost in the obnoxious red-head, that joy when "C" was restored to her in Clem, that unsatisfied desire to have him back on the wire, all to herself; that suppressed jealousy of Cyn, led to—and what it all meant; that she loved him! and he, did he, as they said, love Cyn? alas! who could help loving bright, beautiful Cyn? To attract him to herself was only the romance of their first acquaintance—and even this Cyn slightly shared; it was not Cyn's fault. Nattie could not be guilty of the petty meanness of disliking her friend because she possessed attractions superior to her own. But if he loved Cyn, then, indeed, had the curtain fallen on the sad ending of her romance; the lights were out, and all was darkness. If he loved Cyn? Nattie, with the first full knowledge of her own feelings, could hardly hope otherwise, remembering their intimacy, his marked attention to her, his praise of her, and her winning beauty and talents. Yes, it must be that he loved her! Oh, why must Cyn be given everything, and she—nothing? What kind of fate was it that marked out the broad, sunny road for one, and the somber, uneven pathway for another? Must her life be one of lonely discontent, a telegraph office at the beginning, and a telegraph office at the end? was this to be all?