“These are yours.”
One slipped from the packet and fell to the floor between the two girls. Trude picked it up quickly, a deep crimson sweeping her face.
“Why, it’s one of those letters—” exclaimed Isolde, accusingly.
Trude nodded, guiltily. “I know it. I—I couldn’t bear to destroy them all.”
“Trude, dear, you don’t care anything about that man—now?”
Trude forced a light laugh but her eyes avoided Isolde’s searching glance. “Why, no—at least not in that way. If you like things in a person very much you just have to keep on liking them no matter what happens. And, Issy, it wasn’t his fault that I—I imagined—he cared—for me—” Her voice broke. Isolde gave a quick little cry.
“Trude, you do care! And he isn’t worth the tiniest heartache. He must have led you on to think things. And all the time he was playing with you. It makes me furious! You’re such an old peach.”
The “old peach” made no answer. There flashed across her mind all that Isolde had had to say before about this man; every fibre of her being shrank from a repetition that would bring pain as well as humiliation. She straightened.
“We are a couple of geese to dig all this up now. I was just sentimental enough to hang on to one of the letters—I suppose it’s because they are the only letters I’ve ever had from a man—but I see my mistake now. I will destroy it.” She slipped the letter into her pocket with the tiniest sigh. “So there.” (But the letter was not destroyed.)
“I wish you’d meet someone down at the Whites’—some perfectly grand man. I should think Uncle Jasper would realize—”