Page:The Ivory Tower (London, W. Collins Sons & Co., 1917).djvu/77

THE IVORY TOWER Cissy still held her hands; but Cissy now was grave. "No, there isn't plenty—save so far as what I mean is enough. And I haven't told it to Gussy. It's too good for her," the girl added. "It's too good for any one but you."

Rosanna just waited, feeling herself perhaps grimace. "What, Cissy, are you talking about?"

"About what I heard from Mr. Northover when we met him, when we saw so much of him, three years ago at Ragatz, where we had gone for Mamma and where we went through the cure with him. He and I struck up a friendship and he often spoke to me of his stepson—who wasn't there with him, was at that time off somewhere in the mountains or in Italy, I forget, but to whom I could see he was devoted. He and I hit it off beautifully together—he seemed to me awfully charming and to like to tell me things. So what I allude to is something he said to me."

"About me?" Rosanna gasped.

"Yes—I see now it was about you. But it's only to-day that I've guessed that. Otherwise, otherwise!" And as if under the weight of her great disclosure Cissy faltered.

But she had now indeed made her friend desire it. "You mean that otherwise you'd have told me before?"

"Yes indeed—and it's such a miracle I didn't. It's such a miracle," said Cissy, "that the person should all this time have been you—or you have 63