"I have treated you like a brute," he said, slowly. "And I have treated Mr. Fern just as badly. My punishment is well deserved. But how can this puzzle of her absence be accounted for! Of course she would have had to satisfy me on that point before I could have married her."
The listener turned giddily toward a window.
"And yet you talk of love!" he said, recovering. "If that girl had done me the honor she did you I would not have asked her such a question—I would have refused to listen if it gave her the slightest pain to tell."
"I wonder she did not love you instead of me—for she did love me once," was the sober reply. "You would be a thousand times better, more suitable, than I."
There was no reply to this, but the two men walked slowly out of the house and to the station, where they took the next train for the city. On the way they talked little, and at the Grand Central Depot they separated.
Lawrence Gouger, who had in some strange way learned the news of Miss Fern's return, was awaiting Roseleaf in his rooms.
"Well, I hear the missing one is found," he said, as the novelist came in.
"Yes. She is with her father. But the peculiar thing is that she closes her lips absolutely about her absence. She not only refuses to speak now, but announces that her refusal is final."
Mr. Gouger hesitated what card to play.
"When does the marriage take place?" he asked, finally.