“Then you didn't know? And that had nothing to do with your giving him up?”
“Indeed it had not! Why, if I'd known about that—But the letter you speak of—when was it? I never had a letter from him after I left town. He didn't even answer when I told him we were going.”
“Because he never heard you were going. He got a letter after you had gone, and then he wrote you about the bad luck nonsense. There must have been some strange defect in your mail arrangements.”
“I always thought some letters must have gone astray and miscarried between us. I knew he couldn't be so negligent. I'd have taken pains to clear it up, if I hadn't promised my father just at that time—” She stopped, unable to control her voice longer. Her lips were quivering.
“Speaking of your father,” said Larcher, “you must have got a subsequent letter from Davenport, because he sent it registered, and the receipt came back with your father's signature.”
“No, I never got that, either,” said Florence, before the inference struck her. When it did, she gazed from one to the other with a helpless, wounded look, and blushed as if the shame were her own.
Edna Hill's eyes blazed with indignation, then softened in pity for her friend. She turned to Larcher in a very calling-to-account manner.
“Why didn't you tell me all this before?”
“I didn't think it was necessary. And besides, he never told me about the letters till the night before last.”
“And all this time that poor young man has thought Florence tossed him over because of some ridiculous notion about bad luck?”