“Not tell him you loved him! How then could you tell him yes, as it appears you did?” Helen asked, and Bell answered, “I could not well help that; it came so sudden and he begged so hard, saying my promise would make him a better man, a better soldier and all that. It was the very night before he went, and so I said that out of pity and patriotism I would give the promise, and I did, but it seemed too much for a woman to tell a man all at once that she loved him, and I wouldn’t do it, but I’ve been sorry since; oh, so sorry, during the two days when we heard nothing from him after that dreadful battle at Bull Run. We knew he was in it, and I thought I should die until his telegram came saying he was safe. I did sit down then and commence a letter, confessing all, but I tore it up, and he don’t know now just how I feel.”
“And do you really love him?” Helen asked, puzzled by this strange girl, who laughingly held up her soft, white hand, stained and blackened with the juice of the fruit she had been paring, and said, “Do you suppose I would spoil my hands like that, and incur ma chère mamma’s displeasure, if Bob were not in the army and I did not care for him? And now allow me to catechise you. Did Mark Ray ever propose and you refuse him?”
“Never!” and Helen’s face grew crimson, while Bell continued: “That is funny. Half our circle think so, though how the impression was first given I do not know. Mother told me, but would not tell where she received her information. I heard of it again in a few days, and have reason to believe that Mrs. Banker knows it too, and feels a little uncomfortable that her son should be refused when she considers him worthy of the Empress herself.”
Helen was very white, as she asked, “And how with Mark and Juno?”
“Oh, there is nothing between them,” Bell replied. “Mark has scarcely called on us since he returned from Washington with his regiment. You are certain you never cared for him?”
This was so abrupt, and Bell’s eyes were so searching that Helen grew giddy for a moment, and grasped the back of the chair, as she replied: “I did not say I never cared for him. I said he never proposed; and that is true; he never did.”
“And if he had?” Bell continued, never taking her eyes from Helen, who, had she been less agitated, would have denied Bell’s right to question her so closely. Now, however, she answered blindly, “I do not know. I cannot tell. I thought him engaged to Juno.”
“Well, if that is not the rarest case of cross-purposes that I ever knew,” Bell said, wiping her hands upon Aunt Betsy’s apron, and preparing to attack the piled up basket just brought in.
Farther conversation was impossible, and, with her mind in a perfect tempest of thought, Helen went away, trying to decide what it was best for her to do. Some one had spread the report that she had refused Mark Ray, telling of the refusal of course, or how else could it have been known? and this accounted for Mrs. Banker’s long continued silence. Since Helen’s return to Silverton Mrs. Banker had written two or three kind, friendly letters, which did her so much good; but these had suddenly ceased, and Helen’s last remained unanswered. She saw the reason now, every nerve quivering with pain as she imagined what Mrs. Banker must think of one who could make a refusal public, or what was tenfold worse, pretend to an offer she never received. “She must despise me, and Mark Ray, too, if he has heard of it,” she said, resolving one moment to ask Bell to explain to Mrs. Banker, and then changing her mind and concluding to let matters take their course, inasmuch as interference from her might be construed by the mother into undue interest in the son. “Perhaps Bell will do it without my asking,” she thought, and this hope did much toward keeping her spirits up on that last day of Katy’s stay at home, for she was going back in the morning.
They did not see Marian Hazelton again, and Katy wondered at it, deciding that in some things Marian was very peculiar, while Wilford and Bell were disappointed, as both had a desire to meet and converse with one who had been so like a second mother to the little dead Genevra. Wilford spoke of his child now as Genevra, but to Katy it was Baby still; and, with choking sobs and passionate tears, she bade good-bye to the little mound underneath which it was lying, and then went back to New York.