"Oh, does it trouble you so?" After a moment, "My dear, dear
girl, don't worry about it," and his face is full of genuine distress.
The common comfort of life will not apply to this case.

"It was wrong," she says, tremulously. "You have stayed home from
business, and----"

He laughs, it seems so utterly absurd. Many a day has he been away from
the factory and perhaps not half so innocently employed.

"See here," he begins, "we will let Floyd settle it when he comes home.
Good heavens, won't he make it hot for Marcia! I shall tell him
myself."

"No, no!" and Violet starts up in anguish. "You must not utter a word!"

"Well, why?" asks Eugene, with a kind of obstinate candor. "I'm
sure--flirting, indeed! Why, Marcia couldn't be an hour in the room
with any fellow, young or old, that she wouldn't make big eyes at him.
I like to see people turn saints at short notice. I'll go off and have
it out with her myself, and make her keep a civil tongue in the
future."

"Eugene!" Violet cries, in distress, as he is half-way through the
hall. Oh, what shall she do? Must she go wild with all this pain and
shame?

"Well," he ejaculates, again standing indecisively.

"She said other things," and the dry lips move convulsively. "I must
know; I cannot live with this horrible shadow over everything. There is
no one else to ask."

He comes and seats himself on the divan beside her, and there is a
glimpse of Floyd in his face. His voice falls to a most persuasive
inflection as he rejoins, "Tell me, ask me anything, and I will answer
you truly. There has never been any horrible thing since you came here,
or ever that I can remember. What did Marcia say?"

Perhaps, after all, Marcia did not tell the exact truth, and Violet's
despairing face lightens. Marcia may have Charles Lamb's way of
thinking the truth too precious to be wasted upon everybody, for she is
sometimes extremely economizing. And Violet _must_ know.

"You will tell me if--if Mr. Grandon asked you to marry me--before----"

Eugene springs up and utters a low, angry ejaculation, strides across
the floor and then back again. Violet's face is crimsoned to its utmost
capacity, and her eyes have that awful beseechingness that cuts him to
the soul. If he could, if he dared deny it! but even as this flashes
through his brain a stony kind of certainty settles in every line, and
he gathers that denial would be useless.

"See here, my dear little sister," and sitting down he