Page:The Soft Side (New York, The Macmillan Company, 1900).djvu/298

290 Again she brooded. 'Do you mean you won't?'

'Never, never.'

'Well, then, I don't think I want to.'

'Ah, but that's not a promise.' I kept her up to it. 'I want your word.'

She demurred a little. 'But why?'

'So that at least he shan't make use of you,' I said with energy.

My energy overbore her, though I saw how she would really have given herself. 'I promise, but it's only because it's something I know he will never ask.'

I differed from her at the time, believing the proposal in question to have been exactly the subject she had supposed him to be wishing to broach; but on our very next meeting I heard from her of quite another matter, upon which, as soon as she came in, I saw her to be much excited.

'You know then about the daughter without having told me? He called again yesterday,' she explained as she met my stare at her unconnected plunge, 'and now I know that he has wanted to speak to me. He at last brought it out.'

I continued to stare. 'Brought what?'

'Why, everything.' She looked surprised at my face. 'Didn't he tell you about Maud-Evelyn?'

I perfectly recollected, but I momentarily wondered. 'He spoke of there being a daughter, but only to say that there's something the matter with her. What is it?'

The girl echoed my words. 'What "is" it?—you dear, strange thing! The matter with her is simply that she's dead.'

'Dead?' I was naturally mystified. 'When, then, did she die?'

'Why, years and years ago—fifteen, I believe. As a little girl. Didn't you understand it so?'

'How should I?—when he spoke of her as "with" them and said that they lived for her!'