“I can't stand it here, I must go,” he said, turning a dull, weary look upon her.
“Who was at the Elm House that you knew this last time?” she asked, quickly.
“Laura Dixmore isn't driving me away, if you mean that,” replied Halleck.
“I couldn't believe it was she! I should have despised you if it was. But I shall hate her, whoever it was.”
Halleck sat down before his table, and his sister sank upon the corner of a chair near it, and looked wistfully at him. “I know there is some one!”
“If you think I've been fool enough to offer myself to any one, Olive, you're very much mistaken.”
“Oh, it needn't have come to that,” said Olive, with indignant pity.
“My life's a failure here,” cried Halleck, moving his head uneasily from side to side. “I feel somehow as if I could go out there and pick up the time I've lost. Great Heaven!” he cried, “if I were only running away from some innocent young girl's rejection, what a happy man I should be!”
“It's some horrid married thing, then, that's been flirting with you!”
He gave a forlorn laugh. “I'd almost confess it to please you, Olive. But I'd prefer to get out of the matter without lying, if I could. Why need you suppose any reason but the sufficient one I've given?—Don't afflict me! don't imagine things about me, don't make a mystery of me! I've been blunt and awkward, and I've bungled the business with father and mother; but I want to get away because I'm a miserable fraud here, and I think I might rub on a good while there before I found myself out again.”