“No; oh, no. You least of all,” was Connie’s answer, and putting her head on Kitty’s shoulder, she cried aloud for a moment, then lifting up her head, she said, with an attempt to smile: “Excuse me for the weakness. It is like leaving home, where I have been so happy. I must cry a little.”
Mrs. Stannard, Kitty and the baby went to the station with her in Kitty’s brougham, with the coachman in livery and the blooded horses. Could she have had her choice, she would have preferred going in a wheelbarrow to this fine turnout of the man who had so deceived her. But there was no alternative. Deacon Stannard was away, and she must go with Kitty, who clung to her as if she were her sister, and whose tears were hot on her cheek when she at last said good-bye.
“Too bad you can’t meet Harry; but you saw his picture, didn’t you?” Kitty said.
“Yes, I saw it,” Connie gasped, springing on the platform of the car so as to hear no more of Harry, whose baby, held high up in Kitty’s arms, was the last thing she saw clearly as the train took her away.
CHAPTER XVI
KENNETH AND HARRY
The business which had taken Kenneth to Boston was finished sooner than he expected, and he started for Millville the day after Connie left it. He had made a speech on one of the subjects under discussion, and the older members of the faculty had applauded and pronounced him an honor to the profession. And he had heard their praises and made his speech like one in a dream, wondering how he could have put two sentences together connectedly, and why Connie’s name had not been mixed in with what he said. She was constantly in his thoughts from the time he bade her good-bye and looked into her clear blue eyes, where a shadow of trouble was still brooding, though not so dark as it had been. She was happier since her talk with him by the ledge, and he was more unhappy. What she had told him troubled him continually, filling his brain with conjectures as to the bar there was between them. Away from her, his mind was in a greater turmoil than when with her, and all the way to Boston and after his arrival he was thinking of her, and that she must tell him on his return what it was. He was not usually nervous, but he was fast becoming so, and during his speech he felt his heart beating so loudly that it seemed to him that those who sat nearest must hear it, and with every heart beat there was a thought of Connie, who, it seemed to him, was stretching out her hands and calling to him. But for this he would have stayed in Boston the second night and gone home in the morning, but so morbid and nervous had he grown with a fancy that he was wanted, that he decided to take a late train, which left him in Millville at midnight.
As there was no carriage at that hour, he walked rapidly up the hill till he came near the villa. There was a light in the nursery, and as he passed the house he heard through the open window the baby’s cry and Kitty’s voice soothing it, while mingled with hers was another voice which he recognized as Hal’s.
“Baby has colic, I dare say,” he thought, and his first impulse was to offer his services.
Then he changed his mind as the crying ceased, and went on home, where his mother let him in, marvelling to see him at that hour, and full of the news that Connie had gone.
“Gone! Where? and why?” Kenneth exclaimed, feeling that his nervousness in Boston meant something.