Florence laughed, but with something very like a sigh.
"What, are you willing to take boarders?" said Larcher. "If that"s the case, put me down as the first applicant."
"Our capacity for "paying guests" is strictly limited to one person, and no gentlemen need apply. Two lumps, Flo dear?"
"Yes, please.--If only your restrictions didn"t keep out poor father--"
"If only your poor father would consider your happiness instead of his own selfish plans."
"Edna, dear! You mustn"t."
"Why mustn"t I?" replied Edna, pouring tea. "Truth"s truth. He"s your father, but I"m your friend, and you know in your heart which of us would do more for you. You know, and he knows, that you"d be happier, and have better health, if you came to live with us. If he really loves you, why doesn"t he let you come? He could see you often enough. But I know the reason; he"s afraid you"d get out of his control; he has his own projects. You needn"t mind my saying this before Tom Larcher; he read your father like a book the first time he ever met him."
Larcher, in the act of swallowing some b.u.t.tered m.u.f.fin, instantly looked very wise and penetrative.
"I should think your father himself would be happier," said he, "if he lived less privately and had more of men"s society."
"He"s often in poor health," replied Florence.
"In that case, there are plenty of places, half hotel, half sanatorium, where the life is as luxurious as can be."
"I couldn"t think of deserting him. Even if he--weren"t altogether unselfish about me, there would always be my promise."
"What does that matter--such a promise?" inquired Edna, between sips of tea.
"You would make one think you were perfectly unscrupulous, dear," said Florence, smiling. "But you know as well as I, that a promise is sacred."
"Not all promises. Are they, Tommy?"
"No, not all," replied Larcher. "It"s like this: When you make a bad promise, you inaugurate a wrong. As long as you keep that promise, you perpetuate that wrong. The only way to end the wrong, is to break the promise."
"Bravo, Tommy! You can"t get over logic like that, Florence, dear, and your promise did inaugurate a wrong--a wrong against yourself."
"Well, then, it"s allowable to wrong oneself," said Florence.
"But not one"s friends--one"s true, disinterested friends. And as for that other promise of yours--that _fearful_ promise!--you can"t deny you wronged somebody by that; somebody you had no right to wrong."
"It was a choice between him and my father," replied Florence, in a low voice, and turning very red.
"Very well; which deserved to be sacrificed?" cried Edna, her eyes and tone showing that the subject was a heating one. "Which was likely to suffer more by the sacrifice? You know perfectly well fathers _don"t_ die in those cases, and consequently your father"s hysterics _must_ have been put on for effect. Oh, don"t tell me!--it makes me wild to think of it!
Your father would have been all right in a week; whereas the other man"s whole life is darkened."
"Don"t say that, dear," pleaded Florence, gently. "Men soon get over such things."
"Not so awfully soon;--not sincere men. Their views of life are changed, for all time. And _this_ man seems to grow more and more melancholy, if what Tom says is true."
"What I say?" exclaimed Larcher.
The two girls looked at each other.
"Goodness! I _have_ given it away!" cried Edna.
"More and more melancholy?" repeated Larcher. "Why, that must be Murray Davenport. Was he the--? Then you must be the--! But surely _you_ wouldn"t have given him up on account of the bad luck nonsense."
"Bad luck nonsense?" echoed Edna, while Miss Kenby looked bewildered.
"The silly idea of some foolish people, that he carried bad luck with him," Larcher explained, addressing Florence. "He sent you a letter about it."
"I never got any such letter from him," said Florence, in wonderment.
"Then you didn"t know? And that had nothing to do with your giving him up?"
"Indeed it had not! Why, if I"d known about that--But the letter you speak of--when was it? I never had a letter from him after I left town.
He didn"t even answer when I told him we were going."
"Because he never heard you were going. He got a letter after you had gone, and then he wrote you about the bad luck nonsense. There must have been some strange defect in your mail arrangements."
"I always thought some letters must have gone astray and miscarried between us. I knew he couldn"t be so negligent. I"d have taken pains to clear it up, if I hadn"t promised my father just at that time--" She stopped, unable to control her voice longer. Her lips were quivering.
"Speaking of your father," said Larcher, "you must have got a subsequent letter from Davenport, because he sent it registered, and the receipt came back with your father"s signature."
"No, I never got that, either," said Florence, before the inference struck her. When it did, she gazed from one to the other with a helpless, wounded look, and blushed as if the shame were her own.
Edna Hill"s eyes blazed with indignation, then softened in pity for her friend. She turned to Larcher in a very calling-to-account manner.
"Why didn"t you tell me all this before?"
"I didn"t think it was necessary. And besides, he never told me about the letters till the night before last."
"And all this time that poor young man has thought Florence tossed him over because of some ridiculous notion about bad luck?"
"Well, more or less,--and the general fickleness of the s.e.x."
"General fick--! And you, having seen Florence, let him go on thinking so?"
"But I didn"t know Miss Kenby was the lady he meant. If you"d only told me it was for her you wanted news of him--"
"Stupid, you might have guessed! But I think it"s about time he had some news of _her_. He ought to know she wasn"t actuated by any such paltry, childish motive."
"By George, I agree with you!" cried Larcher, with a sudden energy. "If you could see the effect on the man, of that false impression, Miss Kenby! I don"t mean to say that his state of mind is entirely due to that; he had causes enough before. But it needed only that to take away all consolation, to stagger his faith, to kill his interest in life."
"Has it made him so bitter?" asked Florence, sadly.
"I shouldn"t call the effect bitterness. He has too lofty a mind for strong resentment. That false impression has only brought him to the last stage of indifference. I should say it was the finishing touch to making his life a wearisome drudgery, without motive or hope."
Florence sighed deeply.
"To think that he could believe such a thing of Florence," put in Edna.
"I"m sure _I_ couldn"t. Could you, Tom?"