Rosamund subsided meekly, unable to follow the intricacies of her sister’s mental processes.
She did not argue with June—it was hopeless in the sufferer’s present state of mind—and she made few comments on Barclay’s behavior. But she had her opinion of him, and it was that he was one of the darkest of villains. As to her opinion of June’s part in the story, she was a loyal soul and had none. All she felt was a flood of sympathy for the shocked and wounded girl, and a worried sense of responsibility in a position with which she felt herself unable to cope. It was with great relief that, toward the end of July, she received a letter from the Colonel, who had been six weeks in Virginia City, telling her he would be with them on the following Sunday.
She drove down to the train to meet him with the intention of preparing him for the change in his favorite. She had written to him that June was not well. Driving back from the station she had ample time to expatiate on this theme and warn him not to exclaim unduly on her changed appearance. The Colonel began to be apprehensive and ask penetrative questions, to which she had no answer. He leaped out of the carriage at the veranda steps and ran up to the top, where June stood.
The change in her, flushed with welcome, was not strikingly apparent at the first glance. It was later that he began to realize it, to be startled and then alarmed. She sat quiet through dinner, nibbling musingly at her food, once or twice not answering him. The empty silence of the house struck chill on him, and when he had commented on the absence of visitors, she had said with sudden gusty irritation,
“There’s been nobody here for over a month. I don’t want anybody to come. I’ll go away if anybody’s asked. I like being alone this way.”
He looked at Rosamund with an almost terrified inquiry. She surreptitiously raised her brows and gave her head a warning shake.
It was late in the evening before he had a chance to speak to Rosamund alone. Then, June having gone to her room, and he and Rosamund being left alone in the sitting-room, he laid his hand on the young girl’s shoulder, and said in a voice of command,
“Now, Rosamund, I’ve got to hear all about this. What the devil’s been going on down here?”
She told him the whole story, greatly relieved to have a listener who could advise her.
The Colonel was staggered by it. He said little, but Rosamund was not half-way through when he began pacing up and down, his hands in his pockets, every now and then a low ejaculation breaking from him. He, too, was astounded by the account of June’s underhand behavior. He had thought the two girls as simple as children. That his own particular darling could have consented to, and then so dexterously carried out, a plan of procedure so far from what he had imagined a young girl would do, was painful and shocking to him. But as June’s love could not be killed by one sort of disagreeable revelation, so his could suffer no abatement from another kind. Manlike, he immediately began to make excuses for her.