“I’m sure of it,” said Beatrice.
“Yes; and he’s such a friend of Harold Wynne’s,” continued the artful Norah. “Why, what’s the matter with you, Beatrice? You are as pale—dearest Beatrice, you and I were always good friends. You know that I always liked Harold.”
“Do not talk about him, Norah.”
“Why should I not talk about him? Tell me that.”
“He is gone—gone away.”
“Not he. He’s too wretched to go away anywhere. Archie was with him to-day, and when he heard that—well, the way some people are talking about you and Mr. Airey, he had not a word to throw to a dog—Archie told me so.”
“Oh, do not talk of him, Norah.”
“Why should I not?”
“Because—ah, because he’s the only one worth talking about, and now he’s gone from me, and I’ll never see him again—never, never again!” Before she had come to the end of her sentence, Beatrice was lying sobbing on the unsympathetic cushion of the sofa—the same cushion that had absorbed her tears when she had told Harold to leave her.
“My dearest Beatrice,” whispered Norah, kneeling beside her, with her face also down a spare corner of the cushion, “I have known how you were moping here alone. I’ve come to take you away. You’ll come down with us to our place at Netherford. There’s a lake with ice on it, and there’s Archie, and many other pretty things. Oh, yes, you’ll come, and we’ll all be happy.”