With characteristic straightforwardness Lucy came at once to the point. “I have something I must talk over with you. I don’t know whether I am doing the wise thing. But it is the only honest thing.”
“I can’t imagine what you can have to say.”
“No you can’t. It’s this——” she hesitated, then spoke with an effort. “I am the girl Mr. Simms is in love with. He wants to come back and marry me.”
Edith’s fingers caught at the arm of the chair. “Do you mean that it was because of you—that he didn’t marry me?”
“Yes. He used to come to the office when he was in Washington and dictate letters. And we got in the way of talking to each other. He seemed to enjoy it, and he wasn’t like some men—who are just—silly. And I began to think about him a lot. But I didn’t let him see it. And—he told me afterward, he was always thinking of me. And the morning of your wedding day he came down to the office—to say ‘Good-bye.’ He said he—just had to. And—well, he let it out that he loved me, and didn’t want to marry you. But he said he would have to go on with it. And—and I told him he must not, Miss Towne.”
Edith stared at her. “Do you mean that what he did was your fault?”
“Yes,” Lucy’s face was white, “if you want to put it that way. I told him he hadn’t any right to marry you if he loved me.” She hesitated, then lifted her eyes to Edith’s with a glance of appeal. “Miss Towne, I wonder if you are big enough to believe that it was just because I cared so much—and not because of his money?”
It was a challenge. Edith had been ready to pour out her wrath on the head of this girl to whom she owed the humiliation of the past weeks, but there was about Lucy a certain sturdiness, a courage which was arresting.
“You think you love him?” she demanded.
“I know I do. And you don’t. You never have. And he didn’t love you. Why—if he should lose every cent to-morrow, and I had to tramp the road with him, I’d do it gladly. And you wouldn’t. You wouldn’t want him unless he could give you everything you have now, would you? Would you, Miss Towne?”