"Because it is dreadful." Ruth's voice was unnaturally hard. "I don't know who wrote it, except that her name is Maud, but the letter is written to Graham."
Peggy glanced quickly at the envelope in her hand, and then let it fall to the floor, as if it had scorched her fingers. "O, Ruth," she exclaimed reproachfully, "why did you tell me to read it?"
"Peggy, hush! This isn't a time for quibbling. You've got to help me and tell me what to do." The tears of utter misery began suddenly to course down Ruth's cheeks, and Peggy hastily assumed the role of comforter.
"O, Ruth! You mustn't feel that way about it. Of course you and Graham have always been great chums, but you must have known that some day there'd be somebody he'd care for more than for you."
"Peggy Raymond, I never thought you could be so stupid." Ruth's voice told of exasperation. "Listen! This letter is written by a girl named Maud, and Graham never mentioned such a person to any of us. He has lots of girl friends, like all college boys, and their pictures are all around his room, and I know the names of every single one. But he never has said a word about Maud."
Peggy shook her head helplessly, unable to suggest any satisfactory explanation for Graham's singular omission. Ruth continued, gradually losing her self-control, as she summed up the evidence against the brother she adored.
"That would be queer, Peggy, and it would make me feel dreadfully hurt, but, of course, Graham isn't obliged to tell me about his friends unless he chooses to. That isn't the worst part. You see he's giving her presents, things that cost a lot. It was a pendant this week, and a brooch last, and now she's hinting for a ring."
"Yes, he must think a great deal of her," Peggy acknowledged gravely.
"But Graham hasn't any money of his own. Father's doing it all, and the worst of it is, that Graham's expenses are so heavy this year that father is having a real hard time. He spoke to Graham about it not a week ago, and asked him to be as careful as he could, and Graham talked so beautifully about it, and he wanted to give up lots of things, and father said no, and that he'd get hold of the money somehow. And after all that, Graham has bought jewelry for this Maud."
Peggy made no effort to check her friend's wild outburst of weeping. Under the circumstances it would do Ruth good to cry. She looked with a sense of shrinking disgust at the letter on the floor, as if it had been some sort of loathsome creature. "How could he?" she said to herself, as Graham's frank, handsome face flashed out on the screen of her memory. Only that morning she had seen Graham and his father pass. The older man was listening to something the younger was saying, smiling a little, and the look he bent upon his son was full of trust and confidence. And all the time Graham had been deceiving him, taking the money which meant sacrifices in the home, to buy costly presents for a girl whose name he had never mentioned to his sister. It was no wonder that Ruth cried. Sunny Peggy felt sick and disillusioned.