“Of course you are right, Flo,” she said, and her voice was even. “If he could bear all that, I can be patient too. Larry has had ever so many hard things to do, but it is only because it would not be fair to him I’m not going to him now. Flo, you will not leave me until the trouble’s through?”
Miss Schuyler turned and kissed her, and then, rising quietly, went out of the room. She had shown Hetty her duty to Larry, which she felt would be more convincing just then than an exposition of what she owed her father, and had reasons for desiring solitude to grapple with affairs of her own. What she had done had cost her an effort, but Flora Schuyler was fond of Hetty and recognized the obligation of the bond she was contracting when she made a friend.
Some minutes had passed when Hetty rose and took down her writing-case from a shelf. She could at least communicate with Larry, for the maid, who had more than one admirer among the cow-boys, had found a means by which letters could be conveyed; but the girl could not command her thoughts, and written sympathy seemed so poor and cold a thing. Two letters were written and flung into the stove, for Flora Schuyler’s counsel was bearing fruit; and she had commenced two more when there was a tapping at the door. Hetty looked up with a little flash in her eyes, and swept the papers into the writing-case as Clavering came in. Then she rose, and stood looking at him very coldly.
It was an especially unfortunate moment for the man to approach her in, and, though he did not know why it should be so, he recognized it; but there were reasons that made any further procrastination distinctly unadvisable.
“There is something I have been wanting to tell you for a long time, Hetty,” he said.
“It would be better for you to wait a little longer,” the girl said chillingly. “I don’t feel inclined to listen to anything to-night.”
“The trouble,” said Clavering, who spoke the truth, “is that I can’t. It has hurt me to keep silent as long as I have done already.”
He saw the hardening of Hetty’s lips, and knew that he had blundered; but he was committed now, and could only obey when she said, with a gesture of weariness “Then go on.”
The abrupt command would probably have disconcerted most men and effectually spoiled the appeal they meant to make, and Clavering’s face flushed as he recognized its ludicrous aspect. Still, he could not withdraw then, and he made the best of a difficult position with a certain gracefulness which might, under different circumstances, have secured him a modicum of consideration. As it was, however, Hetty’s anger left her almost white, and there was a light he did not care to see in her eyes when she turned towards him.
“I am glad you have told me this,” she said. “Since nothing else would convince you, it will enable me to talk plainly; I don’t consider it an honour—not in the least. Can’t you see that it is wholly and altogether out of the question that I should ever think in that way of you?”