Mrs. Barrimore felt a tremor run through the girl’s frame before she freed herself, and stood defiant, with parted lips through which the breath came quickly.
“And if I have!” the girl cried, “is it a crime? Can anyone help loving? But father need not trouble himself. I can never marry the man I love. I cannot even let him know I love him. I could not in any case. He does not love me, and his heart is another’s, and always will be. Oh, I know that quite well. At least, I can be allowed to grieve in peace!”
Mrs. Barrimore was deeply concerned. She did not ask who the man was; she thought she knew, and to her the love did not seem so altogether hopeless.
“My dear, take courage,” she said. “He may come to love you yet.”
Tears gushed from the girl’s eyes and fell unchecked.
“Oh, no! and if he did, that would be worse than anything, for we could never marry!”
Mrs. Barrimore, thinking of Philip, believed that Phyllis thought that loyalty to Eweretta would cause him to remain unmarried.
It might be, after all, that Uncle Robert had been right when he had said that Philip had got over the loss of Eweretta. The mother devoutly hoped he had, or would as time went on, and since she could not marry the father, she would be glad—yes, glad—that Phyllis should become her daughter-in-law.
She wished she could sound Philip, but he was so unapproachable. There were tears in her own eyes as she again told Phyllis to hope and not despair.
“I don’t know what to hope for,” said Phyllis. “I have been a little fool, and now I am paying for it, and I shall go on paying for it! Father always said I didn’t know my own mind, but I do now—yes, I do! Father said he wouldn’t let me be engaged to Captain Arbuthnot till I had done sowing my wild oats. Fancy that! sowing wild oats!—as if girls ever did! and that brought all the trouble. If he had let me be engaged, then all this trouble would have been saved, for we should have soon quarrelled, and parted.”