It was too dark for him to see the color that was slowly mounting to her face.
“Constance, I don't believe you,” he cried.
“I was not sure you were coming,” Constance said, weakly.
“You might have known that I'd come back—that I couldn't stay away.”
“Don't you think you have been a long time in making that discovery?”
“Well, yes, but when I saw your father—”
“What did papa say to you?” with keen suspicion in her tones.
“You mustn't blame him, Constance. It was not so much what he said as what he didn't say. I never knew any one to be quite so ostentatious about what was left unsaid.”
Constance freed her hand, and, shrinking into a corner, covered her face. She had a painful realization of the direction those confidences must have taken, between her father, who only desired her happiness, and the candid Oakley, who only desired her love.
“Was there any use in my coming? You must be fair with me now. It's too serious a matter for you not to be.”