“If what, Floy?”
“Even though another has—has won you—”
“No, no, never!” he cried, taking her hands again. “I never have, never can love any one but you. Why should you think it?” and he gazed searchingly into her eyes.
Then she told him something of what she had involuntarily heard a few days previous while waiting in Carrie Lea’s bedroom.
He was indignant and evidently surprised to learn that the girl had his photograph; puzzled, too, to conjecture how it had come into her possession.
“It must have been somehow through her brother,” he said after a moment’s thought. “But, Floy, I have never paid her any particular attention,” he added with deprecating look and tone.
“I believe you fully, Espy,” she replied, with a confiding smile; “but since I have released you from your engagement to me—”
“I do not accept my release,” he interrupted impulsively, “and that being the case, I am answerable to you for my conduct toward other women.”
She shook her head, and was opening her lips to speak again, when the sound of approaching steps prevented. She drew hastily away from Espy’s side, and, seating herself by a window, seemed to have her attention fully occupied with something that was going on in the street.