"I don't know," answered Elmore.
"Owen," cried his wife, interfering for the first time, in response to the look of appeal that Lily turned upon her, "you must write!"
"Celia," he retorted boldly, "I won't write. I have a genuine regard for Hoskins; I respect him, and I am very grateful to him for all his kindness to you. He has been like a brother to you both."
"Why, of course," interrupted Lily, "I never thought of him as anything but a brother."
"And though I must say I think it would have been more thoughtful and—and—more considerate in him not to do this—"
"We did everything we could to fight him off from it," interrupted Mrs. Elmore, "both of us. We saw that it was coming, and we tried to stop it. But nothing would help. Perhaps, as he says, he did have to do it."
"I didn't dream of his—having any such—idea," said Elmore. "I felt so perfectly safe in his coming; I trusted everything to him."
"I suppose you thought his wanting to come was all unconscious cerebration," said his wife disdainfully. "Well, now you see it wasn't."
"Yes; but it's too late now to help it; and though I think he ought to have spared us this, if he thought there was no hope for him, still I can't bring myself to inflict pain upon him, and the long and the short of it is, I won't."
"But how is he to be answered?"