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."

"That is entirely my affair!" When not hurt or injured Elizabeth is
superior, and she added scorn to the tone of her voice, but stopped
fooling with the ring, which I know she hated to send back. "I see you
do not appreciate the confidence I am putting in you or the compliment
I am paying you by telling you first, and if that is the case I will
go." She made movement as if to get up, but she had no idea of going,
so I didn't notice it, but kept on swinging my feet, and then I asked
her if she had told Miss Susanna, and if she hadn't she ought to at
once, Miss Susanna being closely related and I nothing but a summer
boarder. And I said I hoped she would be married right away, as I
would love to be at the wedding, and if she would ask me to be one of
the bridesmaids I would be one with pleasure. But she wouldn't answer
me. Seeing she still had something to say, and wouldn't leave until
she said it, I put my feet back in bed and lay flat with my hands under
my head and my eyes shut, and when at last I was fixed and quiet she
began for a third time.

I don't remember a thing after that except a sort of monotone voice and
something about people talking about me because I had accepted Whythe's
attentions when everybody knew--I didn't hear what everybody knew, and
not until I did hear a sound at the door did I wake up good, and then I
jumped as if shot and asked her, half-asleep, if she were going to live
with Mother and Sister and Sister Edwina and Miss Lily Lou when she was
married, but she answered not. And since her midnight confession she
hath not opened her mouth unto me and her little lips get together when
she sees me coming, and from her friends I have learned that she is
deeply distressed at my treatment of her. And to her friends I have
said Rats! and so endeth the efforts at friendship which she imagined
she had made. I am never going to