Then she turned and laid her hand on his arm.
“Oh, Al,” she said, “please don't think I am altogether an idiot. I surmised when your letters began to grow shorter and—well, different—that there was something or some one who was changing them, and I suspected it was some one. When you stopped writing altogether, I KNEW there must be. Then father wrote in his letters about you and about meeting you, and so often Madeline Fosdick was wherever he met you. So I guessed—and, you see, I guessed right.”
He seized her hand.
“Oh, Helen,” he cried, “if you only knew how mean I have felt and how ashamed I am of the way I have treated you! But, you see, I—I COULDN'T write you and tell you because we had agreed to keep it a secret. I couldn't tell ANY ONE.”
“Oh, it is as serious as that! Are you two really and truly engaged?”
“Yes. There! I've told it, and I swore I would never tell.”
“No, no, you didn't tell. I guessed. Now tell me all about her. She is very lovely. Is she as sweet as she looks?”
He rhapsodized for five minutes. Then all at once he realized what he was saying and to whom he was saying it. He stopped, stammering, in the very middle of a glowing eulogium.
“Go on,” said Helen reassuringly. But he could not go on, under the circumstances. Instead he turned very red. As usual, she divined his thought, noticed his confusion, and took pity on it.
“She must be awfully nice,” she said. “I don't wonder you fell in love with her. I wish I might know her better.”