“And did she do it?” asked Betty, with all the incredulity of a modern girl for such weakness. “Surely she wouldn’t give her lover up because her brother told her to.”
“No,” answered Allen, with a shake of his head, “I imagine she wouldn’t have sent James Barton away if that had been the only reason.”
“Then what other was there?” asked Betty, adding with an impatient shake of the head: “Oh, Allen, you are so slow!”
“Give me time,” protested Allen, with a smile for her impatience. Impatience was marvelously becoming to Betty. “It seems,” he went on, “that Luther Weeks got it into his crusty head that James Barton had mishandled funds belonging to the firm.”
“Oh,” said Betty, softly, with a swift pang of pity for the Isabella Weeks of that time. “And had he, Allen?”
Allen shook his head soberly.
“That’s just the pity of it,” he said. “After Luther Weeks had done all the damage he could do by his accusations—driving his sister from him and separating her from the man she loved—he found out that Barton had been perfectly sincere and upright in all his transactions.”
“And what had happened to him then—to James Barton, I mean?” asked Betty breathlessly.
“He had disappeared,” said Allen. “Went to some other country, perhaps, to start life over again.”
“And Isabella never saw him again?” asked Betty, pityingly.