“Has Miss Dalrymple a mother?”
“A step-mother.”
She knelt down, the better to fill a small basket she carried, and the impulse to speak was too strong.
“You are not angry any longer?”
He paused a second, then his words rushed. “It was a misconception, such as comes from judging before one has heard both sides of the question.” To talk more easily, he reached her side with two strides, and stood looking over the fjord. “He—my friend,”—the words stuck a little—“never blamed her, but, you know, in such cases, one takes forbearance as a matter of course. I knew he was generous. I concluded he must be wronged.”
He paused. Millie, on her knees, leaned backward, but still occupied herself with the strawberries.
“The wedding was close at hand, was it not?”
“Close. Was she wrong?”
The question put, he blamed himself for asking it. It was offering up Anne’s conduct to the world’s judgment. Millie did not answer until she had dropped two or three crimson berries into her basket, then she said in a steady voice—
“If it was an escape from bonds, it was right.”