Page:The New Penelope.djvu/132



"She had certainly caused me to be deluded, innocently or otherwise, into a belief that she regarded me with peculiar favor; and I had been accustomed to take certain little liberties with her, which probably seemed of far greater importance to me than they did to her; for her passional nature was hardly yet awakened, and among our primitive society there was no great restraint upon any innocent familiarities."

"What became of her after that night?—did she marry Darling?"

The answer did not come at once. Thought and feeling were with the past; and I could not bring myself to intrude the present upon it, but busied myself with the leaves and vines and mosses that I had snatched from the banks in passing, while my friend was absorbed in his silent reminiscences.

"You have not heard the saddest part of the story yet," he said at last, slowly and reluctantly. "She kept her word with each of us; ignoring Allen and King entirely; and only vouchsafing a passing word to Charlie and me. Poor Charlie was broken-hearted. He had never been strong, and now he was weak, ill; in short, fell into a decline, and died in the following year."

"Did the story never get out?"

"Not the true story. That scoundrel King spread a rumor abroad which caused much mischief, and was most cruel after what we had done to outrage her feelings in the first instance; but that was his revenge for her slight—I never knew whether she regretted Darling or not. She was so sensitive and willfully proud that she would have died herself sooner than betray a regret for any one who had offended her. Her mother died, and her father took her away with him to the Sandwich Islands. It was said he was not kind to her, especially after her 'disgrace,' as he called it."

"She never forgave you? What do you know about her subsequent history?"