"I have heard all," she said in a cold, quiet tone. "I had no intention of playing the eavesdropper, however. Miss Heatherford and I were here in the conservatory a while ago, when my father called me, but he only wished to ask me a question or two, and then I thought that I would come back to Miss Heatherford, and that is how I happened to be here. I came just as you were declaring that she and she alone held your life and your future in her hands——" and the beautiful girl's nostrils dilated with supreme contempt as she thus repeated his words. "Therefore, considering the relations that have existed between you and me for the last four years, I felt that I had the right to hear you out and learn just to what extent I had been made your dupe——"
"Oh, Gertrude!"
"Hush!" she commanded imperatively. "I will not listen to a word of extenuation from you—there is none—there can be none. I will say my say out, and that will end everything between us. I have long felt that I might perhaps be building my hopes for the future upon shifting sand—there have been many indications of it, but I hoped that you might change for the better—that your good qualities would in the end overbalance your weakness. For more than four years I have worn your ring, believing myself pledged to you," Gertrude went on, as she calmly began to unlace the glove on her left hand, "but to-night you have said in my presence that for many years you have been betrothed to another—that you have loved—worshiped that other."
She turned the glove wrong-side out, to remove it the more quickly, slipped the ring from her finger, and held it out to him. "Here, take it. You and I will part here and now. And do not think that I shall eat my heart out and die because of disappointed love—like the girl of whom we read that summer in the mountains. I am not in the slightest danger of such a fate, for you have this night slain every spark of regard or respect that I ever entertained for you."
"Gertrude, hear me——" Philip began, as he shrank away from the hand that held the ring out to him.
"I have already heard all I wish to hear," she spiritedly returned, and with an inflection that made him wince. "Take it!" she reiterated as she again offered him the ring. "Very well," as he still refused, "I will leave it here for you to think about."
She hung it upon a twig of the plant before him, then turning abruptly from him, swept down and out of the conservatory with the air and step of one who exulted in recovered freedom.
As she disappeared he reached forth his hand and secured the ring, for it was a valuable one, but with a shamefaced air and a muttered curse at his—"luck."
Fifteen minutes later, when he sought his mother, to inform her that he "was not well, and was going home," he espied Mollie and Gertrude standing in an alcove chatting socially together, and as calmly and serenely as if no thought of regret in connection with him had power to cast a shadow across their pathway. Gertrude was perhaps a trifle paler than usual, but she was bright and animated, and he was assured that she "never would eat her heart out for him."
The contempt that had vibrated in her tones as she said it was still ringing in his ears as he left the house, making him quiver from head to foot with a sense of humiliation such as he had never experienced before.