“Good God!” ejaculated Dan. “You can’t mean that you have a trouble so very serious?”
“Say no more about it,” said Phyllis; “as I told you, pity is the last thing I could bear from you.”
If Dan had been furnished with the usual amount of vanity possessed by good-looking and attractive young men, he might have guessed the truth. But he was not. He was singularly free from vanity. The emphasis on the pronoun was quite lost upon him. All he grasped was that she objected to pity. So he remained silent.
Happily they soon reached Hawk’s Nest, and Phyllis was able to hurry to her room.
Once there, she wept with rage that she had spoken as she had. She felt she could not endure it if Dan should guess the state of her heart, especially as she was sure—yes, perfectly sure—that he cared nothing for her beyond what he cared for that sister Isabel of whom he talked.
Of course, if Dan had cared differently, it would all have been equally hopeless, but still she wanted him to care. She foolishly imagined that she could take up what she called her “cross,” if only she could know that Dan loved her.
And Philip! He had made her a hypocrite, she told herself savagely. He had made her write affectionately to her husband when she had not meant a word she wrote.
Phyllis considered herself a downright martyr.
CHAPTER XXVI
“DRAT LOVE AFFAIRS!” SAID MRS. PICKETT
Eweretta was not destined to be so completely isolated after all, for one fine afternoon Mrs. Pickett took a sudden resolve, and putting on her “best things,” walked across the field and made a state call at the White House, where she was so kindly received, that she was emboldened to ask the whole party to take tea at the Farm on the following afternoon.