“Yes, sis, they have,” continued Saxa slowly, “but I didn’t mind so very much. I never cared for him a deal. I never felt that it was what people called love, but one has gone on for years with the idea that one was to marry Neil Elthorne, and I feel now as if I had come down heavily all at once, horse and all.”
“Yes; they’ve fooled us both,” cried Dana, and there was a deep silence in the house now, for the dinner bell had ceased to clang. “What are you going to do? We can’t go in to dinner now.”
“Do?”
“Yes, we can’t pass this over in silence.”
“No,” said Saxa slowly, and as if she were thinking out her words before she spoke them. “I’m going in to poor old daddy to tell him how we’ve been thrown off the scent.”
“It will half kill him.”
“No, it will rouse him, I say. He shall know everything we have heard, and then we shall have the truth from those boys. Oh, if I had only known before!”
She drew herself up—pale now—with wounded pride, and the agony of spirit which made her speak through her set teeth.
There was a sharp tapping at the door. “May I come in?” cried a familiar girlish voice.
“Yes,” said Dana; and Isabel came quickly into the room.