"I do not know, but I am most anxious to see him—to thank him—"
"I am told that he left town at four o'clock. Perhaps you know his address in New York?"
"I do not," she answered coldly. "No doubt he went away hurriedly … frightened of you because of his kindness to me."
She came a step forward to the gate. Instantly his thought veered back to her and his tense face softened.
"How can I blame you," he said hurriedly, "for thinking the worst of me? I've been thinking badly enough of myself, God knows. But don't you know, can't you imagine, that nothing could have held me to the miserable business a single moment after I saw you, had I not been bound by a solemn promise to your poor father?"
"My father! Oh, if he is the sort of man to plot a thing like this, and to bludgeon my mother into it, how could you endure to promise to do it for him?"
"Because he is breaking his heart for you, and you didn't know it. It seemed right that he should see you, since he wants to so much."
All her sense of the wrong he had done her flared up in anger at that. "How do you—dare say what seems right between my father and me? He is breaking his heart for me, he told you? Did he mention to you that she had broken hers for him? Don't you suppose that I have had time—and reasons—to decide which of them I belong to?"
"All this," he said, "was before I knew you."
About them hung the stillness of the country and the long empty road.
The woods stirred; a bird called; a portly hare poked his nose through
the brush over the way, and suddenly scuttled off, his white flag up. In
Mrs, Thurston's yard, the quiet was profound.