One phrase in one sentence of this speech caught and held the young man's attention. He forgot the others.
“You are going away?” he repeated. “What do you mean? Where are you going?”
“I am going to Cambridge to study. I am going to take some courses at Radcliffe. You know I told you I hoped to some day. Well, it has been arranged. I am to live with my cousin, father's half sister in Somerville. Father is well enough to leave now and I have engaged a capable woman, Mrs. Peters, to help Maria with the housework. I am going Friday morning, the day after to-morrow.”
He stopped short to stare at her.
“You are going away?” he asked, again. “You are going to do that and—and—Why didn't you tell me before?”
It was a characteristic return to his attitude of outraged royalty. She had made all these plans, had arranged to do this thing, and he had not been informed. At another time Helen might have laughed at him; she generally did when he became what she called the “Grand Bashaw.” She did not laugh now, however, but answered quietly.
“I didn't know I was going to do it until a little more than a week ago,” she said. “And I have not seen you since then.”
“No, you've been too busy seeing someone else.”
She lost patience for the instant. “Oh, don't, don't, don't!” she cried. “I know who you mean, of course. You mean Ed Raymond. Don't you know why he has been at the house so much of late? Why he and I have been so much together? Don't you really know?”
“What? . . . No, I don't—except that you and he wanted to be together.”