Tommy went to her and put a gentle hand on her shoulder.
“Betty, don’t,” he entreated, “don’t, please. Listen— O gee, if you don’t quit, I shall be blubbering in just one minute, and then——”
As he choked, poor, unselfish Betty made a tremendous effort and controlled the tears that might have afforded her some slight relief. They went on in silence the rest of the way; but at her door Tommy assured her that he would be in to tell her about Rose directly after tea, and Betty thanked him in a voice that at least proved she wasn’t crying.
When he appeared after tea, Betty lay on the sofa in the sitting-room. She hadn’t been able to eat anything and looked so ill that even Aunt Sarah had been touched. She didn’t scold the girl nor even question her. She forbore the satisfaction of telling her brother how Betty had hidden the dish-pan under the sink and stolen away. And now she was washing up the tea things herself in the kitchen.
Betty sprang from the couch at sight of Tommy and stood gazing at him imploringly as if begging him to say that Rose wasn’t dead.
He pushed her back upon the sofa and sat down beside her.
“Rose is all hunky, Betty,” he informed her coolly. “Honest, she took it as easy as if it was all about somebody else. She was mighty interested in the story—made me read every word of it. It is a thriller, you know, the cheek of him and all that. And slick—— We were trying to make out where it was he gave the sheriff the slip. You know that siding a few rods north of the water tower?”
“O, Tommy, tell me, is Rose honestly—resigned? Are you sure—O dear, it will just kill her, I know.”
“No such thing,” he declared. “You think she was bluffing me? Not on your tin-type. Betty Pogany! And she sent word that you’re not to take it any harder than she does and she’ll see you to-morrow.”
Tommy’s words carried a measure of conviction. At least Betty felt that as yet Rose wasn’t suffering as she would be later. Either she was stunned or she hadn’t contemplated what it really meant. As Tommy turned and gazed with perennial interest upon his favorite picture, which represented Vesuvius in violent eruption, the girl forgot his presence. But the partial and temporary relief in regard to Rose only cleared the way for other complications. On a sudden a vision of Mr. Meadowcroft flashed across her mind. He wasn’t—in a flash, Betty saw her conduct towards him stripped now entirely of its secret moral justification, in all its glaring, ugly nakedness.