Dick’s formerly pale face crimsoned and he looked down at the ground, beginning to walk slowly on. “We—we thought it best this way, Miss Esther, and still think so. It has been hard upon you perhaps, but isn’t it better that one person should suffer than that a number should be made unhappy?” There was almost entreaty in Dick Ashton’s voice and at the same time he meant to make no betrayal if Esther did not know what he supposed she might possibly have learned within the past few weeks.
Esther’s reply left no room for doubt. “It is best this way now,” she answered slowly. “I can’t say that I think it altogether fair or just at the beginning. But so far as I am concerned, why you need never worry.”
“I wish there were some way in which we could make it up to you, but we have nothing now to be of any assistance to anybody. It is what my mother meant in a measure when——”
Esther nodded. “I understand and there is no need of talking about repaying me. Betty has already done more than that and there is nothing in the world I would not do or give up for her sake. I care for her more than she may ever know.”
His companion’s voice trembled so that Dick feared she might be losing her self-control and knew that they had a hard enough task before them.
They were not very far from Sunrise cabin now and feared that at any moment Betty Ashton might come out to meet them, since Dick had telegraphed that he was coming to see her on important business in order that she might be a little bit prepared for what was to follow.
“It is a pretty dark road for all of us just now, Miss Esther, but some day perhaps without our having to make the decision things will right themselves somehow,” he returned kindly.
And at this instant the young man and girl discovered Betty flying along the path in their direction. It was a fairly warm April afternoon and she wore her blue cape, the cape which Esther remembered so well during the spring of her own coming to the big Ashton house. She had on no hat and her hair was tied back in a loose bunch of red-brown curls.
Evidently Betty had suspected no trouble from Dick’s telegram (Betty and trouble were so far apart these days), for she laughed and waved both hands in joyous welcome at her brother’s approach.
“Where did you two people find one another? I believe it was all arranged beforehand and Dick Ashton’s visits to our cabin are quite as much to see Miss Esther Clark—Crippen I meant to say—as they are to see poor little me.” Betty had always enjoyed teasing Esther and now she expected this silly remark of hers to make her friend blush and scold, but Esther seemed not to have paid the least attention, not even to have heard her. And in the same instant Betty guessed that something serious had occurred.