“Wrong? For shame! How could any girl who knew my darling old Mark as you did help loving him?”
“But it made him dissatisfied. I was the cause of his going away.”
“That foolish thought again! You were not, dear. It would have been the same if he had loved any girl. He said that he would not ask any woman to be his wife while he was tied down here without any prospects; and he went off to make his fortune, as many another brave young Englishman has gone before.”
“But I made him discontented, dear.”
“You made him behave nobly. Why, what other man would have said as he did, ‘I hold you to no engagement. I ask nothing of you: I only tell you that I love you with all my heart’?”
“‘And some day I will return,’” said Richmond, in a low deep voice.
“Yes, and some day he will return, dear: I do believe it, I will believe it, and—Oh, Rich, Rich, Rich, why, why are we such unhappy girls?”
It was the elder’s turn now to try and comfort the younger, who had burst into a passionate fit of weeping, so full of anguish that, at last, Richmond raised her friend’s hand, kissed it, and holding the bonny little head between her hands, she said, with almost motherly tenderness.
“Janet, Hendon has been speaking to you again?”
There was no reply.