"Very well."
"Caro, do you remember that time when you told me how you loved Rodney?"
Now the girl winced visibly beneath this cruel thrust. But she answered, promptly, "Yes."
"Well, I don't believe a word of it; I don't believe you could ever love anybody,—lucky creature that you are!"
Carolyn looked for one instant at the eyes fixed upon her. Then Prudence suddenly threw her arms about her cousin, and exclaimed, with an outburst of tears:
"Oh, do forgive me! I'm half crazed! I don't know what I'm saying! I have to suffer so, and nobody seems to think a woman like me can suffer!"
Carolyn remained rigidly quiet; she would not pretend to respond to this embrace; inwardly she turned sick at it. Yes, of course Prudence could suffer; and she ought to suffer.
Carolyn was astonished at the vigor of her own resentment. And why had Rodney Lawrence's wife come here? To spy out the land? Well, she should not be much rewarded if that had been her object.
Finding that her embrace and her tears seemed productive of very little, Prudence sat up and put her handkerchief to her face for a moment.
"I know," she said from its folds, "that there are some things a woman cannot forgive. But, though I stole your lover away from you, I've not been supremely happy since. And I know you used to pity unhappiness."