"N-not angry? You are! You must be! It was too mean—too contemptible——"
"Please don't. Besides, I took possession of your sleigh. Bailey did the business for me. I didn't know he had left the Austins, of course."
She looked up quickly; there was a dimness in her eyes, partly from earnestness; "I did not know you had made a mistake until you spoke of the Austins," she said. "And then something whispered to me not to tell you—to let you go on—something possessed me to commit this folly——"
"Oh, no; I committed it. Besides, we were more than half-way here, were we not?"
"Ye-yes."
"And there's only one more train for Beverly, and I couldn't possibly have made that, even if we had turned back!"
"Y-yes. Mr. Seabury, are you trying to defend me?"
"You need no defense. You were involved through no fault of your own in a rather ridiculous situation. And you simply, and like a philosopher, extracted what amusement there was in it."
"Mr. Seabury! You shall not be so—so generous. I have cut a wretchedly undignified figure——"
"You couldn't!"