“Because, after all, you got me into it, Miss Fearing,” George answered rather sadly. “So, perhaps, you would have known what to do this time.”
“I got you into the scrape?” Constance looked as much distressed as though it were really all her fault.
“Oh, no—I am not in earnest, exactly. Only, I have such an abominably contrary nature that I went to Tom Craik’s door just because you advised me not to—that is all. I had only seen you twice then—and——” he stopped and looked fixedly at the young girl’s face.
“I knew I was wrong, even then,” Constance answered, with a faint blush. The colour was not the result of any present thought, nor of any suspicion of what George was about to say; it was due to her recollection of her conduct on that long remembered afternoon nearly four months earlier.
“No. I ought to have known that you were right. If you were to give me advice now——”
“I would rather not,” interrupted the young girl.
“I would follow it, if you did,” said George, earnestly. “There is a great difference between that time and this.”
“Is there?”
“Yes. Do you not feel it?”
“I know you better than I did.”