“How can I do otherwise, Harriet?”
“I suppose you couldn’t—with that adamantine pride of yours. And of course it was awkward that he had to get into the papers. But Beau says these things blow over sooner than one would expect. Nobody thinks it’s half as bad as they all pretend to think it.” (Harriet, you must understand, felt rather sorry for Frank, and thought that she was pleading his cause. She did not understand that her few words would do more to damn him than all that the family had been able to say.)
But she perceived that Sylvia did not want to talk about the subject. “Well, Sunny,” she said, after a pause, “I see you’ve got a substitute ready.”
“How do you mean?” asked Sylvia, dully.
“I mean your Dutch friend.”
“My Dutch friend? Oh—you are talking about Mr. van Tuiver?”
“You are most penetrating, Sylvia!”
“You’ve heard about him?” said the other, without heeding her friend’s humor.
“Heard about him! For heaven’s sake, what else can one hear about in Castleman County just now?”
Sylvia said nothing for a while. “I suppose,” she remarked, at last, “it’s because I came in a special train.”