Her eyes filled with tears, but she pressed her pocket handkerchief to them and would not give way.
“Betty!” he protested, greatly distressed, “you know I——”
“You might have trusted me!” she cried reproachfully. “You might have known I wouldn’t break rules just for the sake of being bad, and that for all the world I wouldn’t have been hateful to you on purpose. You might—you might have trusted me, Mr. Meadowcroft.”
“Yes, Betty, I might have,” he owned, deeply moved, but more perplexed than ever. “I almost wish I had. And yet—how could I? You wouldn’t explain—you wouldn’t vouchsafe one word, and when I appealed to you, you seemed—well, just plain stubborn and headstrong. And you must consider my position. I was in another’s place, trying to hold things together for him as best I could. And I had to regard the others. Everyone knew that you and Tommy and I were like old friends, and it was my duty, not to favor you as inclination might have urged, but to be strictly impartial, just as it was yours not to——”
He broke off, for he couldn’t find words which would express the idea without sounding unkindly. Betty turned to the window again. Her distress was evident, and good as were his intentions, he felt constrained to cease from troubling her. Only as they drew into South Paulding he spoke.
“I am going away to-morrow, going to Philadelphia for a little, so I will say good-bye now, Betty. I hope your holidays may be very happy.”
Happy! as if she would ever know a happy day again with Rose blind forever when she might have recovered her sight—and he who spoke thus mockingly, to blame! She put a limp hand into his without a word. Tommy was waiting for her, and they went off together.
Later, Tommy appeared in Meadowcroft’s sitting-room.
“I hear you’re going off again,” he grumbled.
“I am glad there’s someone who will regret my absence,” Meadowcroft observed.