“You had your best clothes in your valise on the bed, and were going to sell them to get it,” Rossie said, “and I felt so sorry for you that I wrote to Mr. Fleming myself, and told him what I thought about such debts, and how sick and crazy you were, and your mother just dead, and you no way to pay, and asked him to give up the debt.”
“Yes, yes,” Everard gasped, while his face grew white as ashes; and still he could not forbear a smile at the mistake with regard to Joe’s sex, a mistake of which he was very glad, however. “Yes,” he continued, “you wrote all this, and what was the reply?”
“Just what you might expect from the bad, unprincipled, grasping man,” Rossie said, energetically, shaking her shorn head. “I told him it was wrong to gamble and tempt you to play, and told him how sick you were, and how angry your father would be, and added that, if after all this, he still insisted upon the money, he was not to trouble you, but write directly to me, and he was mean enough to do it. He said he was sorry you were sick, but he must have the money, and that you owed him seventy-five, and you would tell me he had a right to ask it.”
“Yes,” Everard said again, but the yes was like a groan, and every muscle of his face twitched painfully, “yes. He wrote this to you, and you raised the money; but how?”
Rosamond hesitated a moment, and then replied:
“Do you remember I told you that Miss Belknap once offered to buy my hair?”
“Oh, Rossie!” Everard exclaimed, as the truth flashed upon him, making the plain face of that heroic little girl seem like the face of an angel,—“oh, Rossie, you sold your beautiful hair for me, a scamp, a sneak, a coward! Oh, why did you humiliate me so, and make me hate and loathe myself?” and in his great weakness and utter shame Everard covered his face with his hands and sobbed like a child.
Rosamond was crying, too,—was shedding bitter tears of disappointment that she had made the great sacrifice for nothing except to displease Mr. Everard.
“Forgive me,” she said at last, “I thought you would like it. I did not want you to sell your clothes,—did not want your father to know. I meant to do right. I am sorry you are angry.”
“Angry!” and in the eyes which looked at Rossie there was anything but anger. “I am not angry except with myself; only I am so mortified, so ashamed. I think you the dearest, most unselfish person in the world. Who else would have done what you have?”