"Oh, my dear, this is dreadful! pray, pray do not say any more, you make me quite unhappy," exclaimed Miss Cosie, putting up her plump hands in dismay. "Miss Marriott, if you love me, ask this dear soul not to say any more."
"I think it upsets her and Mr. Logan to be thanked," observed Queenie, turning her face a little aside, for Miss Cosie's helplessness and terror moved her to inward laughter. "I think I would let it be, Langley."
"Yes, do, there's a dear good creature," returned Miss Cosie, breathing a little more freely; "it cuts one like a knife to hear you, and then to know that one has nothing to do with the matter at all."
"Miss Cosie means that she and Mr. Logan have no present use for the money, that they did not intend to spend it," put in Queenie calmly; "but she is so flurried and upset by the whole business that it is kindest not to talk to her at all upon the subject. It only distresses her kind heart," went on the young girl with the utmost calmness, though her heart sank over Miss Cosie's first blunder.
And Langley, with her usual tact, quietly changed the subject.
But Queenie returned home ill-at-ease.
"I feel as though I were walking over a mine that might explode at any moment under my feet," she said to Mr. Logan when he came to her the next day to inform her that Garth had paid that visit to the Carlisle Bank. "I hardly dare trust Miss Cosie out of my sight."
"Oh, it will be all right," he answered soothingly; "in a few days the subject will have blown over, and she will have forgotten all about it. Don't trouble yourself. This little plot of yours is making you nervous."
"I think it is," she returned frankly; "my peace of mind is quite gone, and I do nothing but anticipate difficulties; but, all the same, I would not undo our work," smiling in her old bright manner.