“I cannot help fearing that it would be a very sad mistake for either of them. Oh, Johnny, I am just tormented out of my peace, doubting whether or not I ought to speak. Sometimes I say to myself, yes it would be right, it is my duty. And then again I fancy that I am altogether mistaken, and that there’s nothing for me to say.”
“But what could you say, Anna?”
Anna had been nervously winding her thin gold chain round her finger. She unwound it again before answering.
“Of course—what could I? And if I were to speak, and—and—find there was no cause,” she dreamily added, “I should never forgive myself. The shame of it would rest upon me throughout life.”
“Well, I don’t see that, Anna. Just because you fancied things were serious when they were not so! Where would be the shame?”
“You don’t understand, Johnny. I should feel it. And so I wish I had stayed down at Whitney, out of the reach of torment. I wish another thing with all my heart—that Helen would not have Sophie Chalk here.”
“I think you may take one consolation to yourself, Anna—that whatever you might urge against her, it would most likely make not the smallest difference one way or the other. With Tod I am sure it would not. If he set his mind on marrying Sophie Chalk, other people’s grumbling would not turn him from it.”
“It might depend a little on what the grumblings were,” returned Anna, as if fighting for the last word. “But there; let it drop. I would rather say no more.”
She took up a photograph book, and we began looking over it together.
“Good gracious! Here’s Miss Cattledon? Small waist and all!”