gently—when they got home, in the small hours of the February morning.
Miss Anstruther had been silent and subdued during the drive home. She was considerably ashamed of herself. She was more ashamed of having ill-treated the white-faced boy over that dance—now that it was done—that she would have been to reject him after encouragement; use had blunted her feelings to this sort of sin; but the wrong of breaking cold-bloodedly an engagement to dance was altogether out of harmony with her character and her practices. She was notorious for leading men on to certain humiliation; she was celebrated for the punctilio with which she kept her word in the smallest matter. She had injured the good reputation in snapping the backbone of the bad one; and she did not feel at all pleased with Lord Nunthorp, who had said or implied one thing, and then stared its opposite. She had cheered up, however, on her arrival at the house: she had found a letter for herself, with three bright blue stamps in the corner, stuck up on the mantelpiece. Her hand had closed eagerly over this letter before the lamp was turned up. She was twisting it between her fingers, under her shawl, while her sister reproved her, not too seriously, for her treatment of that boy.
"I know it," she answered, rather dolefully; "I know well enough what a flirt I am! I have never denied it in my life, not even to them. But I really never mean them to go so far. And—and I don't think I'm so heartless as I make myself out to be!"
Her sister gazed at her fondly. Her own family, at all events, loved and believed in Miss Anstruther, and held that her faults were on the surface. The sister now saw in the sweet, flushed face the look that Lord Nunthorp had seen (and under-estimated) more than once.
"Is there someone you care for after all, Midge dear? she asked softly.
"There may have been someone all the time," the young girl whispered, her eyelids fallen, her hand squeezing the letter under her shawl.
"Is it—is it Ted Miller?"
"Is it—is it Ted Miller?"
Midge lookup into her sister's eyes. Her lip was quivering. She was a girl who seldom cried—her detractors would have told you why. She controlled herself before speaking now.
"It was the most hopeless affair of them all," she said simply; "but—but he was the only one who really meant it!"
His letter was against her bosom.
The married sister's eyes had filled. "You write to each other still, don't you, Midge?"
"Yes—as friends. Good night, Helen!"
"Good night, darling Midge; forgive me for speaking!" Helen whispered, kissing her eyes.
"Forgive you? You've said nothing to what I deserve!"
The girl was running up to her room two steps at a time. Ted Miller's letter was pressed tight to her heart.
