"I didn't think you would take it so," said Ben.
"How else could I view it?" asked Gertrude; "could you expect that such a course would win my respect?"
"You take it very seriously, Gertrude; such flirtations are common."
"I am sorry to hear it," said Gertrude. "To my mind, unversed in the ways of society, it is a dreadful thing to trifle thus with a human heart. Whether Kitty loves you is not for me to say; but what opinion, alas! will she have of your sincerity?"
"I think you're rather hard, Miss Gertrude, when it was my love for you that prompted my conduct."
"Perhaps I am," said Gertrude. "It is not my place to censure; I speak only from the impulse of my heart. One orphan girl's warm defence of another is but natural. Perhaps she views the thing lightly, and does not need an advocate; but, oh, Mr. Bruce, do not think so meanly of my sex as to believe that one woman's heart can be won to love and reverence by the author of another's betrayal! She were less than woman who could be so false to her sense of right and honour."
"Betrayal!—Nonsense! you are very high-flown."
"So much so, Mr. Bruce, that half-an-hour ago I could have wept that you should have bestowed your affection where it met with no requital; and if now I wept for the sake of her whose ears have listened to false professions, and whose peace has, to say the least, been threatened on my account, you should attribute it to the fact that my sympathies have not been exhausted by contact with the world."
A short silence ensued. Ben went a step or two towards the door, then stopped, came back, and said, "After all, Gertrude Flint, I believe the time will come when your notions will grow less romantic, and you will look back to this night and wish you had acted differently." He immediately left the room, and Gertrude heard him shut the hall-door with a bang.
A moment after the silence that ensued was disturbed by a slight sound which seemed to proceed from the recess in the window. Gertrude started, and, as she went towards the spot, heard a smothered sob. She lifted a curtain, and there, upon the window-seat, her head buried in the cushions, and her little slender form distorted into a strange attitude, sat, or rather crouched, poor Kitty Ray.