“I am glad of that,” she said. “I am glad. It saves me so much.”
“And I may stay?” he exclaimed, in his old, impetuous fashion. “Lisbeth——”
Though he held her hand fast, she managed to stoop down, under pretense of rescuing the blue-ribboned hat from the sand.
“You need not go,” she answered.
And that was the end of it.
The three Misses Tregarthyn looked at each in blank dismay, when these two walked into the parlor, an hour after. But Hector grasped his nettle with a matter-of-fact boldness, for which Lisbeth intensely admired him in secret.
“I went out on the beach to find Miss Crespigny, and I found her,” he announced. “Here she is, Miss Clarissa, Miss Millicent, Miss Hetty! She has promised to marry me. Oblige us with your blessing.”
The trio fell upon their beloved Lisbeth, and embraced, as they had done on the previous occasion; but this time she bore it better.
That night Lisbeth sat up until one o’clock, writing a long letter to Georgie Esmond, and trying, in a strangely softened and penitent mood, to be open and straightforward for once.
“I am going to marry Hector Anstruthers, and try to be better,” she wrote. “You know what I mean, when I say ‘better.’ I mean that I want to make Lisbeth Anstruthers a far different creature from Lisbeth Crespigny. Do you think I ever can be a ‘good’ woman, Georgie—like you and your mother? If I ever am one, it will be you two whom I must thank.” And as she wrote this, she shed not unhappy tears over it.