“I will tell you all about it. I would not explain anything to her—I could not after she had told me what he said,” Star answered, but her face flushed with shame at the thought of confessing a tale of love and devotion on her part, of deception and treachery on the part of the man whom she had so trusted.
It seemed to her like a lack of dignity and of strength of character that she should have been so easily duped.
Then she told him all the story of her love for Archibald Sherbrooke, beginning with that day when they had exchanged souvenirs on the steamer, and which, she felt, had been the commencement of their love. She told him how he had prevented her from leaping on the cars when they were in motion, and how every day after that he had contrived to meet her, luring her heart from her day by day, until the previous Saturday he had declared his love for her, and won her promise to be his wife as soon as she should have graduated.
“Oh, Uncle Jacob,” Star concluded, hiding her face on the arm of his chair again, “I believed him so true, so honorable, so worthy of my love, and now to find him so unprincipled and treacherous, it crushes me!”
Mr. Rosevelt looked very grave, almost stern.
“This is just as I supposed—as I was led to believe from your appearance last Saturday. I knew well enough, when we returned home from Coney Island, that you had promised to be Sherbrooke’s wife. But I don’t understand his treachery, as you call it, nor what connection all this has with the young lord who has come to ask for Josephine’s hand,” he said, coldly.
Star looked up again, at the unfamiliar tone.
“Oh!” she said, wearily; “I am so miserable that I have not made it plain to you—I have not told you; but Lord Carrol is only another name for the man who called himself Archibald Sherbrooke. Under the latter he cheated me into loving him, and he has ruined my life; under the former, which is his real name, I suppose, he has been trying to win the heiress.”
Mr. Rosevelt was speechless from amazement at this revelation, and for a full minute could only look down into those piteous, uplifted eyes in mute dismay.
“Impossible!” he cried, at length. “I cannot believe it; I cannot think that young Sherbrooke would be guilty of anything so dastardly. There must be some mistake.”