“Darling Alice! Precious Alice: If my heart were not already broken, it would break in leaving you.”
“Yes, yes; I remember,” said Marian, and Alice continued:
“She said your handwriting was queer, when she gave me back the note. That evening, Josh came back from Frankfort with a heap of letters for Frederic, and one of them I know was from you. I was standing out under the big maple tree thinking of you, when Isabel came and asked to take the note again, and I let her have it. Ever so long after, I started to go into the library, for I heard somebody rustling papers, and I didn’t know but Dud was doing mischief. Just as I got to the door, I heard a voice like Isabel’s only sounded scared like, exclaim, ‘It is from her, but he shall never see it, never;’ or something like that, and when I called to her she wouldn’t answer me until I got close to her, and then she laughed as if she was choked, and said she was trying to frighten me. Marian, that her was you, and that he was Frederic. She copied his writing, and sent the letter back because she wanted Frederic herself.”
“Could she do such a thing,” said Marian more to herself than to Alice, who replied:
“She can do anything; for Dinah says she’s one of the ——, I reckon that I’ll skip that word in there, because it’s almost swearing, but it means Satan’s unaccountables,” and Alice’s voice dropped to a whisper at what she fancied to be profanity.
Marian could understand why Isabel should do such a wicked thing even better than Alice, and after reflecting upon it for a time, she accepted it as a fact, and even suggested the possibility of Isabel’s having been the author of the letter from Sarah Green.
“She was! she was!” cried Alice, starting to her feet! “It’s just like her—for she thought Frederic would surely want to marry her then. I know she wrote it, and managed to get it to New York somehow;” and as is often the case poor Isabel was compelled to bear more than her share of the fraud, for Marian, too, believed that she had been in some way implicated with the letter from Sarah Green.
“And I may tell Frederic now—mayn’t I?” said Alice. “Suppose we set to-morrow, when he’s in the library among the letters. He’ll wonder what I’m coming in there for, all wrapped up in shawls. But he’ll know plenty quick, for it will be just like me to tell it all at once, and he will be so glad. Don’t you wish it was to-morrow now?”
Marian could not say she did, for she had hoped for more decisive demonstration of affection on Frederic’s part ere she revealed herself to him, but Alice was so anxious, and had waited so patiently, that she at last consented, and when at supper she met Frederic as usual, she was conscious of a different feeling towards him than she had ever experienced before. He seemed unusually dejected, though exceedingly kind to her, talking but little, it is true, but evincing, in various ways, the interest he felt in her, and even asking her to sit with him awhile ere returning to Alice’s chamber. There was evidently something on his mind which he wished to say, but whatever it might have been, seven o’clock found it still unsaid, and as Alice retired at that hour, Marian arose to go.
“Must you leave me?” he said, rising too, and accompanying her to the door. “Yes, you must!” and Marian little guessed the meaning these three words implied.