Miss Barfoot deliberated, but finally told the story of Amy Drake. Her hands supporting one knee, her head bent, Rhoda listened without comment, and, to judge from her features, without any emotion of any kind.
“That,” said her friend at the close, “is the story as it was understood at the time—disgraceful to him in every particular. He knew what was said of him, and offered not a word of contradiction. But not very long ago he asked me one evening if you had been informed of this scandal. I told him that you knew he had done something which I thought very base. Everard was hurt, and thereupon he declared that neither I nor any other of his acquaintances knew the truth—that he had been maligned. He refused to say more, and what am I to believe?”
Rhoda was listening with livelier attention.
“He declared that he wasn’t to blame?”
“I suppose he meant that. But it is difficult to see—”
“Of course the truth can never be known,” said Rhoda, with sudden indifference. “And it doesn’t matter. Thank you for satisfying my curiosity.”
Miss Barfoot waited a moment, then laughed.
“Some day, Rhoda, you shall satisfy mine.”
“Yes—if we live long enough.”
What degree of blame might have attached to Barfoot, Rhoda did not care to ask herself; she thought no more of the story. Of course there must have been other such incidents in his career; morally he was neither better nor worse than men in general. She viewed with contempt the women who furnished such opportunities; in her judgment of the male offenders she was more lenient, more philosophical, than formerly.