“Don’t think that, yet, Bella, dear. I’ll write to him and explain it all, and he’ll know it wasn’t your fault. He won’t blame you. He’s too kind-hearted and good not to see that it was hasty of him to act as he did.”
“That won’t matter, Harry. I’d like him to know that I’m not the kind of woman he seemed to think. But I could never, never look him in the face again after—that—after what he saw and said. I’d always think he was thinking of it. It’s all over, Harry, it’s all over.”
When at last Henrietta had soothed her sister to sleep she stood beside the bed looking down at Isabella’s grief-stricken face and listening to the sobs that now and then convulsed her throat.
“And you could do this, Felix Brand!” she said bitterly. “You, that we thought so noble and good! Hugh Gordon is right—you are a wicked man, and if you are the one he meant you don’t deserve to live!”
CHAPTER XX
“Save Me, Dr. Annister!”
Mildred Annister, passing the open door of her father’s waiting room, sent into it a casual glance, came to a sudden stop, and then, with a brightening face, went quickly in, saying softly, “Felix!” Sweeping the room with her eyes she saw that he was its only occupant and ran toward him, holding out her hands and asking, apprehensively: