"But I will, Mary, I will! Don't you love him?"
"Love him?" said the girl. "My God!" Then, in a whisper, "If I only hadn't loved him—so much. . . . I am going to have a baby."
It seemed as if Miss Lydia's little friendly chirpings were blown from her lips in the gust of these appalling words.
Mary herself was suddenly composed. "They sent him off to Mexico at twenty-four hours' notice; it was cruel—cruel, to send him away! and he came to say good-by— And. . . . And then I begged and begged father to let us get married; even the very morning that he went away, I said: 'Let us get married to-day. Please, father, please!' And he wouldn't, he wouldn't! He wanted a big wedding. Oh, what did I care about a big wedding! Still—I never supposed— But I went to Mercer yesterday and saw a doctor, and—and found out. I couldn't believe it was true. I said I'd die if it was true! And he said it was. . . . So then I rushed to Carl's office. . . . He was frightened—for me. And then we thought of you. And all day to-day I've just walked the floor—waiting to get down here to see you. I couldn't come until it was dark. Father thinks I'm in bed with a headache. I told the servants to tell him I had a headache. . . . We've got to manage somehow to make him let us get married right off. But—but even that won't save me. It will be known. It will be known—in January."
Miss Lydia was speechless.
"So you've got to help me. There's nobody else on earth who can. Oh, you must—you must!"
"But what can I do?" Miss Lydia gasped.
"Carl and I will go away somewhere. Out West where nobody knows us. And then you'll come. And you'll take—It. You'll take care of it. And you can have all the money you want."
"My dear," Miss Lydia said, trembling, "this is very, very dreadful, but I—"
The girl burst into rending crying. "Don't you—suppose I know that it's—it's—it's dreadful?"