"It's him!" she whispered.
Mattie did not answer; she went back to her seat by the toilet-table, and turned her head away from the one faithful to her, to the last. She was vexed that she had not kept her secret closer, and deceived them all!
"It's no good telling me it ain't him, Mattie—cos it is!" Ann Packet said, after following Mattie to the table, and taking another chair facing her; "there's nothing else—there can't be nothing else, girl. Well, I wouldn't grieve because his sight's come back—that's not right!"
"Do you think I grieve for that?" cried Mattie, fired into defence; "oh! Ann, how can you ever think so badly of me!"
"Then you're afraid that he won't like you any more?"
"How do you know he ever liked me, or said he did?"
"I—I guessed as much."
Ann Packet, we know, possessed a secret as well as Mattie.
"You guessed wrongly."
"I guessed what you did, Mattie—there!"