Star’s beautiful lips curled.
“What would his explanations amount to? He is here as a suitor for Josephine’s hand—they all confess it; and did you ever listen to a more monstrous story than Mrs. Richards repeated here to-night? To think that he could say anything so basely false of me is almost enough to drive me wild,” Star cried, excitedly. “No, Uncle Jacob; although he has been guilty of the most cruel treachery, I will not contend with him. If he is such a craven that he would try to win a young girl’s heart for the amusement of breaking it, and then seek to blight her fair fame by charging her with what he has imputed to me to-night, he is too far beneath me to be worthy of anything save my supreme contempt, and I never wish to meet him again. I only want to get away from them all, and never see their faces more.”
Her voice broke with such a wail of despair in it that the old man could not find it in his heart to refuse her anything.
“Very well; we will go away to-morrow,” he said, sorrowfully.
“Oh, thank you, Uncle Jacob!” the unhappy girl said, eagerly; “and will you go without letting them know? They would never consent, and I do not wish them even to know where I go.”
“Yes; we will go without saying anything to any one. We can leave a note telling them why we go, and it shall be the object of the little time that remains to me to care for you and try to make your young life a little brighter than it has been,” he returned, thoughtfully.
“How early can you be ready?” he asked, after a moment.
“By daylight; the earlier the better,” she returned, earnestly. “Every moment here is full of pain for me.”
“Very well; there is a six o’clock train—the workingmen’s train—into New York; we will take it, and find a home for ourselves somewhere in the city. But how about your school, Star? They will seek for you there.”
“I will go to Professor Roberts and tell him that circumstances compel me to leave, and ask him for a recommendation to some other institute. There are others in the city where they would never dream of looking for me, and where I can graduate next year, as I have planned to do.”