“Oh, it makes no difference!” retorted Lydia, wildly. “I am going away. I am going home. I have money enough to get to Trieste, and the ship is there, and Captain Jenness will take me back with him. Oh!” she moaned. “He has been in Europe, too, and I suppose he's like the rest of you; and he thought because I was alone and helpless he had the right to—Oh, I see it, I see now that he never meant anything, and—Oh, oh, oh!” She fell on her knees beside the bed, as if crushed to them by the cruel doubt that suddenly overwhelmed her, and flung out her arms on Mrs. Erwin's coverlet—it was of Venetian lace sewed upon silk, a choice bit from the palace of one of the ducal families—and buried her face in it.
Her aunt rose from her pillow, and looked in wonder and trouble at the beautiful fallen head, and the fair young figure shaken with sobs. “He—who—what are you talking about, Lydia? Whom do you mean? Did Captain Jenness—”
“No, no!” wailed the girl, “the one that gave me the book.”
“The one that gave you the book? The book you were looking at last night?”
“Yes,” sobbed Lydia, with her voice muffled in the coverlet.
Mrs. Erwin lay down again with significant deliberation. Her face was still full of trouble, but of bewilderment no longer. In moments of great distress the female mind is apt to lay hold of some minor anxiety for its distraction, and to find a certain relief in it. “Lydia,” said her aunt in a broken voice, “I wish you wouldn't cry in the coverlet: it doesn't hurt the lace, but it stains the silk.” Lydia swept her handkerchief under her face but did not lift it. Her aunt accepted the compromise. “How came he to give you the book?”
“Oh, I don't know. I can't tell. I thought it was because—because—It was almost at the very beginning. And after that he walked up and down with me every night, nearly; and he tried to be with me all he could; and he was always saying things to make me think—Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear! And he tried to make me care for him! Oh, it was cruel, cruel!”
“You mean that he made love to you?” asked her aunt.
“Yes—no—I don't know. He tried to make me care for him, and to make me think he cared for me.”
“Did he say he cared for you? Did he—”