When he hinted that he knew more of her life than she supposed, there instantly flashed into Josephine’s mind the memory of all the love affairs she had been concerned in, and the improprieties of which she had been guilty, and she wondered if it were possible that Everard could know of them, too. But it was not, and, assuming a calmness she was far from feeling, she said:
“Go on, I am all attention.”
Very rapidly, Everard went over with the events of his life as connected with her up to the time of his father’s death and his own disinheritance, and here he paused a moment, while Josephine said:
“And so it was through me you lost your money. I am very sorry, and I must say I think it mean in that girl to keep it, knowing as she does how it came to her.”
“You misjudge her,” Everard said, quickly. “You know nothing of her, or how she rebelled against it and tried to give it back to me. But she cannot do it while she is under age, and I would not take it if she could. I made her believe it at last, and then counseled with Miss Belknap as to my future course——”
“Miss Belknap, indeed!” Josephine exclaimed, indignantly. “Don’t talk to me of Miss Belknap, the tricky, deceitful thing, to come into our house, knowing all the time who I was, and yet pretending such entire ignorance of everything. How I hate her, and you, too, for sending her there as a spy upon my actions.”
“You are mistaken,” Everard said. “Bee was no tale-bearer, and no spy upon your actions. Neither was she sent to you, for I did not know she was there till she wrote me to that effect. She had the best of motives in going to your mother’s house. She wished to see you for herself, and,—pardon me, Josey, if I speak very plainly,—she wished to find all the good there was in you, so as to know better how to befriend you, should you need it.”
“Which, thank Heaven, I don’t, so she had her trouble for her pains,” was Josephine’s rejoinder, of which Everard took no notice, but simply went on:
“Beatrice has been your best friend from the moment she first heard of you, and after father’s death she advised me to go straight to you and tell you the whole truth, and offer you a home such as I could make for you myself,—in short, offer you poverty and protection as my acknowledged wife.”
“Strange you did not follow her advice, with your high notions of morality,” Josephine said, with a sneer; and he replied: