"I'm not afraid—it is not that," said Harriet; "I only wish to know what you would think the best method of telling him all, and yet sparing him pain. I have been fancying that if you hinted to him at first the truth——"
"I hint!" exclaimed Mattie, "not for the world. I'm only a servant here, and you might as well ask poor Ann Packet to hint the truth as me. I'm sorry—you will never know how sorry I am—that you two are going to break it off forever; but I should be more sorry still if you let to-night go by, and not try hard to face him."
"Mattie, I will face him," said Harriet, with her lips compressed; "I will tell him all. After all, it was not an engagement, and I was as free as he to make my choice elsewhere if I preferred. I am not in the wrong to tell him that my girlish fancy was a mistake."
"No—only in the wrong to keep the truth back."
"You will not think that I have intentionally attempted to deceive poor Sidney, will you?"
"God forbid, my dear."
"Vain—frivolous, and weak—anything but cruel. Yes, I will tell him all when he comes back to-night. There is no use in delay."
"Only danger," added Mattie, remembering her copy-book admonition; a copy which Sidney Hinchford had set her himself in the old days, when she was deep in text-hand.
"And then when it is all told, and he knows that I am free, happiness will come again, I suppose. Heigho! I was very happy once."
"Happiness will come again," said Mattie, more cheerfully, "to be sure."