“He thought you did. He thought you cared for him. So did I, so did everybody.”
“Yes. I know that. He’s so popular that people take it for granted one must care for him. But I didn’t—in the way you mean.”
Bram was still dubious.
“Then, why,” said he suddenly, “do you take this so much to heart?”
Claire made a valiant attempt to dry her eyes and steady her voice.
“Because,” said she in a hesitating voice, “because of—of—because of papa! He wanted me to marry him; he counted on it; and now—oh, dear, I don’t know what he will do, what he will say. Well, it can’t be helped. I must go back; I must go home. Good-bye; good-night!”
Before Bram could do more than babble out “Good-night, Miss Claire,” she had flown like the wind down the hill towards the farm.
Bram went back to his lodging in a sort of delirium. Was it possible that Claire had spoken the truth to him? That she really cared not a straw for her cousin except in a cousinly way; that all she was troubled about was her father’s displeasure at having missed such a chance of a connection with the family of the long purse.
Bram understood very little about the nature of women. But he had, of course, acquired the usual vague notions concerning the reticence, the ruses of girls in love, and he could not help feeling that in Claire’s denial there was matter for distrust. How, indeed, should she, this little friendless girl who had no other lovers, fail to respond to the affection of a man as attractive, both to men and women, as Chris Cornthwaite? And did not the behavior of Chris himself confirm this view? If Claire had not cared for him, why should he have received Bram’s frowns, his angry reproaches, with something which was almost meekness, if he had felt them to be absolutely undeserved? The more he considered this, the more impossible it seemed that Claire’s lame explanation of her tears, of her distress, could be the true one. It seemed to Bram that Theo Biron, with his shrewdness and his cunning, must have been the very person to feel most sure that Josiah Cornthwaite would never allow the marriage of Chris with Claire.
Again, why, if she had not felt a most deep interest in Chris had she taken such a bold step as to follow him up the hill that night? Surely it must have been in the hope of speaking with him, perhaps of reassuring herself from his own lips on the subject of the rumors of his approaching marriage, which must have reached her? If, too, Chris had had nothing to reproach himself with on her account, why had he fled so quickly, so abruptly, at the first sight of her?