“You said you were going to Miss Lennox's,” he remarked, anxiously, feeling that in some way he had displeased her.
“Yes, to carry her some sweet-peas.”
“She must have been real good-looking when she was young,” Granville said, injudiciously.
“When she was young,” retorted Ellen, angrily. “She is beautiful now. There is not another woman in Rowe as beautiful as she is.”
“Well, she is good-looking enough,” agreed Granville, with unreasoning jealousy. He had not heard of Ellen's good fortune. His mother had not told him. She was a tenderly sentimental woman, and had always had her fancies with regard to her son and Ellen Brewster. When she heard the news she reflected that it would perhaps remove the girl from her boy immeasurably, that he would be pained, so she said nothing. Every night when he came home she had watched his face to see if he had heard.
Now Ellen told him. “You know what Miss Cynthia Lennox is going to do for me,” she said, abruptly, almost boastfully, she was so eager in her partisanship of Cynthia.
Granville looked at her blankly. They were coming into the crowded, brilliantly lighted main street of the city, and their two faces were quite plain to each other's eyes.
“No, I don't,” said he. “What is it, Ellen?”
“She is going to send me to Vassar College.”
Granville's face whitened perceptibly. There was a queer sound in his throat.