“Oh!”
“I’m popular with the boys. They’re strong for me just now. But ’twouldn’t take much to make ’em turn on me. I know ’em!” she concluded grimly.
She knew a great many things, it was evident, of which Betty Hunt was ignorant. When the cabaret singer went away with her pattern she left Betty much to ponder about, which did not fundamentally deal with Nell Blossom’s problems.
When Nell had gone a grimmer shadow overcame Betty’s mind—a shadow that had lain athwart her path since that bitter season just preceding the death of her Aunt Prudence Mason and Betty’s withdrawal from boarding school.
The events of those last weeks at Grandhampton Hall were etched so deeply upon Betty’s memory that they could not be effaced. She believed that they never would be.
And on this day all had been rubbed raw again by Joe Hurley’s outbreak. If he had only not spoken as he had! If things had only gone on between Betty and him as they had been going—calmly, quietly; yes, she confessed it now, really pleasantly.
She had come to think of the mining man’s attention as an undoubted aid to her placid life. Her rides with him, and their association in other ways, their conversations on various subjects had been of greater moment in establishing her peace of mind than Betty had realized.
She faced that fact—alone in her own room now—with fuller appreciation of what Joe Hurley had come to mean to her.
She was an utterly honest girl. She had faced a terrible and soul-racking situation before and come to a decision which she had held to through all the months since she had left school.
Just what did Joe Hurley mean to Betty Hunt?