It appeared to Bee suddenly as if she had become the culprit, and all eyes were fixed on her. She trembled, looking at them all. What had she done? She was surely unhappy enough, wretched enough, a clandestine visitor, keeping Aubrey out of his own house, and what had she to do with Aubrey? Nothing, nothing! Nor he with her—that her heart should now be snatched out of her bosom publicly in respect to him.
“That is long past,” she said, faltering, “it is an old story. Mr. Aubrey Leigh is—a stranger to me; it is of no consequence—now!”
“Bee,” her father thundered at her, “answer the question! Was it because of—this lady that you changed your mind?”
Colonel Kingsward had always the art, somehow, of kindling the blaze of opposition in the blue eyes which were so like his own. She looked at him almost fiercely in reply, fully roused.
“No!” she said, “no! It was not because of—that lady. It was another—reason of my own.”
“What was your reason?” cried Mrs. Leigh. “Oh, Bee, speak! What was it, what was it? Tell me, tell me, my dear, what was your reason? that I may prove to you it was not true.”
“Had it anything to do with—this lady?” asked Colonel Kingsward once more.
“I never spoke to that lady but once,” cried Bee, almost violently. “I don’t know her; I don’t want to know her. She has nothing to do with it. It was because of something quite different, something that we heard—I—and mamma.”
Miss Lance looked at him with a smile on her face, loosing the grip of her hands, spreading them out in demonstration of her acquittal. She rose up slowly, her beautiful eyes filled with tears. She allowed it to be seen for the first time how she was shaken with emotion.
“You have heard,” she said, “a witness you trust more than me—if I put myself into the breach to secure a pause, it was only such a piece of folly as I have done before. I hope now that you will let me withdraw. I am dreadfully tired, I am not fit for any more.”