It was cruel in me to take out of her mouth what she was moistening her lips to say, but I was sleepy and I didn’t want details.  She had no idea of being cut out of saying what it was her determination to say, however, considering I had been responsible for some unhappy days during the past two months, and before she got through she had said all she wanted me to hear.  If it hadn’t been for the pillow I would have rolled out of bed.  The nerve of her!  The belief of her!  And, oh, my granny! the punishment, as she imagined, of me!

Before she left the room she told me she could no longer hold out against Whythe’s pleadings.  Told me he had suffered so during the summer she was uneasy about him, and, though he had tried to forget, it had been useless, and, unable to endure it any longer, he had come to her and told her he could stand no more, and if she did not promise to marry him at once he would—­he would—­ Her voice trailed, but I said nothing, the end of the sheet being stuffed into my mouth for politeness’ sake, and when her tears had been wiped away she began again.

“It is hard to forgive Whythe, because you are so young, and he knows how fascinating he is and how little experience you have had with young men, but his father was a flirt before him” (poor Father!  I thought of the retribution that had come to him in Mother, and I pushed in more sheet), “and it is natural in a man to seek amusement and entertainment when he is suffering as Whythe was.  I hope you will forgive him.  It is because he may have made you imagine things that were not so, and because you have been so nice to him, that I thought you should be the first to know.”

I rolled back to the side of the bed facing her, from which I had rolled the other way for safety, and took the end of the sheet out of my mouth.  “Have you told IT?” I asked.  “It doesn’t make any difference about my knowing as I knew before you did, but something is due that which you brought back with you.  Have you told IT, Elizabeth?”

“Told who?  I don’t understand.”  She sat up.  “I don’t know who you are talking about.”

“Don’t you?” I too sat up and swung my bare feet over the side of the bed.  “I am talking about the person to whom I read in the Twickenham Town Sentinel that you were engaged.  He dresses like a man, and he may be one, but even if he isn’t he deserves to be treated decently by the lady who had promised to marry him.  I suppose he knows.”  I nodded to her hand, on which was the ring he had given her and which she had been twirling as she talked.  “That is, if you have had time to tell him.”