She paused for a considerable time, but Margaret did not prompt her to go on. Perhaps she foresaw what was coming, and at any rate she saw clearly that there was struggle and disturbance in Millicent's mind.
After awhile the girl resumed:
"The one love of your life, Margaret, is for Mr. Boyd Westover. It began long before you knew it and it will last as long as you live. Now I am going to make a shameful confession," she added. Then she broke into a gallop, but when the horses resumed a moderate pace she did not make the confession. Perhaps she shrank from it. Perhaps she deemed it unnecessary. Perhaps she thought its making might tend rather to complicate than to simplify the problems in hand. However that may be, she made no further reference to the matter, but took up her parable where she had laid it down.
"Something, I don't know what—yes, I do, but I don't know why—has come between you and Mr. Boyd Westover. I am not blind, and I think I am not stupid. There were unopened letters there from him to you, and other unopened letters from you to him. Without asking anybody any questions I know that for some reason somebody has sought to cut off communication between him and you. I see clearly that that purpose has been accomplished, and I see that as a consequence he has been thinking you fickle and treacherous, as women so often are, and you have been thinking him disloyal and dishonorable."
"No, no, no," interrupted Margaret. "I have never accused him of disloyalty or dishonor, even in my wildest moments of perplexity and distress. I have never for one moment doubted his honor. It is only that I have been unable to conjecture why he left me in silence, when in fact he was writing great, manly, loving letters to me every day. Oh, Millicent, it was cruel, and I can never forgive—"
She did not need mention the name.
"You haven't read Mr. Westover's unopened letters," suggested Millicent.
"No, I have no right now. They were written in the past, when he loved and trusted me. He might not wish me to read them now. He might not feel in the same way toward me now that he did then."
"That's stuff and nonsense, I think, Margaret. I really do. If I were you I should read the letters carefully. Then I should sit down and write to Mr. Boyd Westover, enclosing the letters you wrote to him at that time and explaining how all the trouble had come about."
"That would never, never do. It would be throwing myself like a cast-off garment at his feet. It would be asking him to renew relations that he may have been glad to forget."