“What was your place in it, Mr. Eddy?” she said, “except just as a friend: and there is no difference in that. You’re still a friend—unless you have changed your mind.”
“May! you are a little witch! you’re a—Come, you know this is all nonsense,” said Eddy; “I never pretended to be a friend.”
“Well, perhaps you never were—to Archie, at least,” said Marion.
“What do you know about Archie? What have I done to Archie? I never intended—I never thought of harming him: I could swear it,” cried Eddy, in great excitement; “never! never! I’ve done a heap of wrong things,” he put up his hand to his throat with a gasp as for breath, “I’ve done enough to—sink me for ever. I know I have: you needn’t say anything with your little set face that I was silly enough to care for. But I never meant to ruin Archie, nor harm him, never! I’ll go to your father, and tell him——”
“What will you tell him?” cried Marion, to whom nothing but her own share in Eddy’s expressions seemed of any importance. “That we’ve perhaps been very silly, you and me?—but you the most, for I was never meaning what you thought. I am not a person to let myself go,” said the girl, folding her hands. “I was just willing to be very friendly—but no more. All the rest was just—your fun. I thought you cared for nothing but fun. And I’m not averse to that myself,” she said, turning her face to his with the provoking and saucy smile which Eddy had so completely understood, yet which—was it possible—he had fallen a victim to all the same. It was Marion who had the upper hand. She was not averse to the fun, but she did not mean to compromise her future for Eddy, any more than Eddy up to this moment had intended to do for her. But Marion thought it best now to conciliate him, that he might not rush off and compromise matters by making proposals to her father, which was all she thought of. As for those wild words about Archie, Marion did not even pretend to inquire what they meant.
He went to Mrs. Rowland as soon as he could get a chance after the leave-taking of so many of her guests. “You will have to shake hands with me, too, presently,” he said. “I am going off to-night.”
“You, Eddy?” Evelyn’s face grew longer and graver with a certain dismay. “I was calculating upon you to keep us cheerful,” she said. “Why must you go?”
“I have so many reasons I couldn’t tell you all. In the first place I must, which perhaps will do: like the fool that had a hundred reasons for not saluting—but first of all because he had neither powder nor shot.”
“What is the must?” said Evelyn, “your father perhaps coming back——”
“Oh, I know,” said Eddy, “that the governor would refuse you nothing, Mrs. Rowland—though I am next to nothing in his estimation, to be sure. No, there’s other reasons, pecuniary and otherwise.”