The girl smiled wanly. “I don’t know. I can’t tell till I have had a chance to think it over and—get used to it,” she said almost gaspingly. “It is—pretty sudden. Thank you, sir, and—good day.”
She dragged herself to Paulding, still in a daze. From Paulding she took the train home. There was no longer special reason for saving her fares, and in any event, the walk from Millville seemed to have taken every atom of her strength.
At the station at South Paulding, Tommy awaited her.
“Your Aunt Sarah came ripping and tearing over to our house after she’d been to Rose’s thinking you were lost or kidnapped or run away,” he said to account for his presence. “I told her Mr. Meadowcroft had sent you an errand to do through me and that——”
The boy faltered. He couldn’t go on. Betty’s expression arrested him. Was it horror or terror or—what?
Up to that moment, Betty had thought only of Rose—how cruelly her hopes had been raised and kept up when really there had never been any hope: it was all worse than a lie. Now it came upon her that much besides was involved. Learning of her terrible mistake had on a sudden changed the aspect of everything; it had removed the moral support from her past actions so that suddenly now everything gave way, collapsed, and fell about her ears. And here was poor, innocent Tommy involved in the ruins! He had told falsehoods; he had lied once and again; he was so used to it now that he had rattled this one of to-day off glibly. And now there was no justification—no June to make everything right!
CHAPTER XXXVI
“WHAT is it, Betty? What’s up? He isn’t—dead?” the boy asked hoarsely.
Betty stared at him. “Come into the station—no, stand under this light, Tommy,” she bade him, “and read this.” And she thrust a paper into his hand with glaring headlines and an awful portrait of the bearded man of many aliases on the first page.
The boy’s eyes widened—seemed almost to start from his head as he gazed at the picture and the headlines. He swallowed the latter whole, then read the text wonderingly with great and growing excitement, with many interjections and, it must be owned, not without enjoyment of the dramatic completeness of the affair. But the moment he looked from the page to Betty’s tragic face, he was all sympathy.