Tom laughed to himself, wondering how she could be rid of what she never had, and still he pitied her, for he knew how she was writhing with humiliation and disappointment. She was very white and there was a drawn look about her mouth, and Tom noticed that she shivered as a stronger gust of wind than usual swept across the piazza. She was cold, she said at last, rising, and giving her hand to Tom:
“I am glad you told me and I know now it was not I that he cared for, but what he might get with me. I shall go home to-morrow, wiser than when I came. Good-night.”
She was gone before Tom could detain her, and a moment after was in her room sobbing so loudly that Rena heard her, and stepping out of bed came to her side, asking what was the matter. Irene never forgot the main chance. If she had won Rex, Rena’s friendship would not be as necessary to her, but she had lost him and Rena, must be retained. Very rapidly she repeated what Tom had told her.
“It was horrible about that eye,—my eye,—and I can see it myself and always shall. He is not very bright, or he would have seen the joke,” she said; “but I did care for him and I thought he cared for me. I know better now, and there is nothing left me but you, Rena. You will not desert me. You will be the same after you are Tom’s wife that you always have been.”
It is needless to say that Rena’s soft heart melted at once and she assured her cousin that her friendship would never fail. There was comfort in this, opening up visions of frequent visits to Newton and the material good which always came from intercourse with Rena. And Irene’s spirits began to rise.
Once, as she lay awake that night, there came to her the thought that it might not be a bad scheme to try her hand with Colin, who had been far more gracious to her than Rex, but she soon gave that up. She had met him as she was leaving his house, and his manner, though civil, had not been very cordial.
“Bless my soul, Miss Burdick, you here?” he had said and with some commonplace remark had passed on.
Remembering this, she knew that he, too, had changed, and concluded to abandon her attack on him; nor would she see Rex again. He had deceived her. He cared only for money, and she believed she hated him. She was nobody now, where she had been so much; even Miss Parks’ manner was different, and she would leave the next day. This resolution she carried out in spite of Rena’s efforts to detain her. She only came for her trunks, she said, and was needed at home.
Tom and Rena went with her to the station, and when that evening Tom saw Rex, he said to him, “Irene left a good-by for you; she has gone.”
“Gone so soon? I thought I might see her again,” Rex replied; then after a moment, he added; “Better so, perhaps,” and that was all the mention he made of her.