Alexa received him with a shade of displeasure.
“I am going away,” he said, abruptly, the moment they were seated.
Her heart gave a painful throb in her throat, but she did not lose her self-possession.
“Where are you going?” she asked.
“To New York,” he replied. “I have got a situation there—in a not unimportant house. There at least I am taken for an honest man. From your heaven I have fallen.”
“No one falls from any heaven but has himself to blame,” rejoined Alexa.
“Where have I been to blame? I was not in my father's confidence. I knew nothing, positively nothing, of what was going on.”
“Why then did you not come to see me?”
“A man who is neither beggar nor thief is not willing to look either.”
“You would have come if you had trusted me,” she said.