“Why did you keep it from me?” she questioned again. “What object could you have had in wishing to keep me in ignorance of that which you knew would give me great pleasure to learn? Why could you not be generous to your classmate, and give a hard-working, worthy young man the honor which belongs to him?
“So,” she continued, as he still sat mute before her, and dropping her eyes again upon the program, “Clifford Faxon has completed his college course and distinguished himself, as I knew he would. I was sure that there was power, determination, and perseverance above the average in his character. Oh, I wish I could have come to Boston a day earlier, attended commencement, and heard his oration.”
She sat lost in thought for a moment or two, a look of keen disappointment on her beautiful face. Then turning suddenly to her companion again, she briefly inquired:
“Where is Mr. Faxon now?”
“I don’t know; he left town the day after commencement,” Philip returned in a tone of constraint.
“Is his picture among these?” eagerly questioned Mollie, and touching the pile of photographs between them.
Philip started as if he had been stung, and his lips curled like an angry dog’s.
“Assuredly not,” he loftily responded.
“I am sorry; I should like to see him as he looks to-day, though I am sure he cannot have changed enough to prevent me from recognizing him if I should meet him anywhere,” Mollie observed, and her every word cut her listener like a lash. “But you have not told me, Phil, why you kept from me the fact that he was at Harvard with you. Have you a grudge against him? I wondered why you appeared so strangely the other day when I was telling you about him; wondered how you could listen so indifferently to the story of his wonderful heroism and speak so sneeringly of him; and then, when you knew all the time of whom I was talking, and how glad I would have been to learn more about him, to pretend ignorance and deceive me! I am inclined to be very angry with you.”