"Don't be offended, Mary," she said, good-naturedly. "I have no right to interfere; but Angus is an old friend of mine. Why do you treat him like that?"
The girl looked at her with a sort of quick, frightened, inquiring glance; and then said—as if she were almost afraid to hear herself speak—
"Has he spoken to you?"
"Yes. Now don't make a mole-hill into a mountain, Mary. If he has offended you, tell him. Be frank with him. He would not vex you for the world: do you think he would?"
The girl's hand was beginning to tremble a good deal; and her face was white, and piteous.
"If you only knew him as well as I do, you would know he is as gentle as a child: he would not offend any one. Now, you will be friends with him again, Mary?"
The answer was a strange one. The girl broke into a fit of wild crying, and hid her face in her friend's bosom, and sobbed there so that her whole frame was shaken with the violence of her misery.
"Mary, what is it?" said the other, in great alarm.
Then, by and by, the girl rose, and went away over to her sketching materials for a minute or two. Then she returned: her face still rather white, but with a certain cold and determined look on it.
"It is all a mistake," said she, speaking very distinctly. "Dr. Sutherland has not offended me in the least: please tell him so if he speaks again. I hope we shall always be good friends."