Winnie was in the conservatory, holding a book in one listless hand, idly fingering a trailing vine with the other. Her eyes, usually so merry and sparkling, were tear-dimmed and fixed on vacancy. Her pretty face was unnaturally woeful; her piquant mouth, sad and drooping.
She sprang up, however, with a quick exclamation, when Leslie’s hand parted the clustering vines, and Leslie’s self glided in among the exotics.
“Sit where you are, Winnie,” said Leslie, in a voice which struck her listener as strangely chill and monotonous. “Let me sit beside you. It’s not quite so dreary here, and I’ve something to say to you.”
Casting a look of startled inquiry upon her, Winnie resumed her seat among the flowery vines, and Leslie sank down beside her, resuming, as she did so, and in the same even, icy tone:
“Dear, I want you to promise me, first of all, to keep what I am about to say a secret.”
Winnie lifted two inquiring eyes to the face of her friend, but said no word.
“I know, Winnie, that you have ever been my truest, dearest friend,” pursued Leslie. “But now—ah! I must put your friendship to a new, strange test. I feel as if my secret would be less a burden if shared by a true friend, and you are that friend. Winnie, I have a sad, sad secret.”
The young girl turned her face slowly away from Leslie’s gaze, and when it was completely hidden among the leaves and blossoms, she breathed, in a scarcely audible whisper:
“I know it, Leslie; I guessed.”
“What!” queried Leslie, a look of sad surprise crossing her face, “you, too, have guessed it? And I thought it so closely hidden! Oh,” with a sudden burst of passion, “did my husband suspect it, too, then?”