Page:Elizabeth Jordan--Tales of the city room.djvu/192

 grown very fond of you." She hurried on as if not daring to dwell on this too long. "I'm going abroad almost immediately, to be gone two years; so I shall not see you for that time, unless you run over there. My family will come next summer, as usual, and we shall travel about—I don't quite know where. Of course the work was hard and often unpleasant, but now that it's over, I don't mind that."

She folded the telegram and her face clouded at a sudden recollection.

"I don't know whether you have heard this," she said, "but it has come to me within the last day or two that a few busybodies have been saying unpleasant things about me. They 're the type who won't admit that they don't know everything. They know nothing about me, so they made up some interesting and exciting yarns and told them freely. I believe they have made me out a sort of adventuress."

Her lips curled as she spoke. Evidently she had no idea of the nature of the "interesting and exciting yarns" she mentioned. "I'm glad I did n't know about it sooner,"