"I knew you wouldn't let him come to see me here."
"Never presuppose what I'll do. But go on—I'm interested—very. Just as much as if Ronicky Doone himself were telling me."
She eyed him shrewdly, but, if there were any deception in him, he hid it well. She could not find the double meaning that must have been behind his words. "I went there, however," she said, "because I was sorry for him, John. If you had seen you'd have been sorry, too, or else you would have laughed; I could hardly keep from it at first."
"I suppose he took you in his arms at once?"
"I think he wanted to. Then, of course, I told him at once why I had come."
"Which was?"
"Simply that it was absurd for him to stay about and persecute me; that the letters I wrote him were simply written for fun, when I was doing some of my cousin's work at the correspondence schools; that the best thing he could do would be to take my regrets and go back to the West."
"Did you tell him all that?" asked John Mark in a rather changed voice.
"Yes; but not quite so bluntly."
"Naturally not; you're a gentle girl, Caroline. I suppose he took it very hard."