"He is there in the interest of my father-in-law," said Mr. Green.
"You—-your father-in-law?" she gasped, staring at him wildly.
"Yes—my wife's father," he said somewhat plaintively. He sat down near her, a nervous unsettled look in his eyes. She felt her heart turn cold; something seemed to be tightening about her throat. The light of hope that had been fanning began to flicker its way to extinction.
"You are married?" came from her stiff lips.
"Yes," he replied doggedly. "A year ago, Betty. I—I did not write to Agatha about it because I—I hoped that she'd never know how false I was to my promise. But, she's done the same thing; that takes a terrible load off my mind. I feared that I might find her waiting, you know. It would have been hard to break it to her, don't you see?"
To his amazement, she laughed shrilly, almost hysterically. In the flash of a moment's time, her feeling toward Harry Green began to undergo a change. It was not due to the realisation that she had lost all hope of having him for her own; it was, instead, the discovery that her small girlish love for him had been the most trivial of infatuations and not real passion. She laughed because she had pitied Agatha and Green and herself; she laughed, moreover, in memory of her deliberate eagerness to assume Agatha's burdens for purely selfish reasons.
"I know it's amusing to you," he agreed with a wry smile. "Everything amused you, as I remember, Betty. Do you remember that night in Condit's conservatory when you and I were hiding from—"
"Don't, please!" she objected, catching her breath painfully. "I was a foolish girl then, Harry. But tell me all about your—your wife. I am crazy to know."
He looked involuntarily toward the window before replying; she observed the hunted look in his eyes and wondered.
"There isn't much to tell. She lives in Patagonia," he said, somewhat sullenly. Then he glanced at his watch.