“I will never forgive Eleanor. She has betrayed my confidence.”
“Why did you tell her, though? This is a most serious thing.”
Why does anyone tell anything? The question is eternal, and it was not surprising that Miss Bartlett should only sigh faintly in response. She had done wrong—she admitted it, she only hoped that she had not done harm; she had told Eleanor in the strictest confidence.
Lucy stamped with irritation.
“Cecil happened to read out the passage aloud to me and to Mr. Emerson; it upset Mr. Emerson and he insulted me again. Behind Cecil’s back. Ugh! Is it possible that men are such brutes? Behind Cecil’s back as we were walking up the garden.”
Miss Bartlett burst into self-accusations and regrets.
“What is to be done now? Can you tell me?”
“Oh, Lucy—I shall never forgive myself, never to my dying day. Fancy if your prospects—”
“I know,” said Lucy, wincing at the word. “I see now why you wanted me to tell Cecil, and what you meant by ‘some other source.’ You knew that you had told Miss Lavish, and that she was not reliable.”
It was Miss Bartlett’s turn to wince. “However,” said the girl, despising her cousin’s shiftiness, “What’s done’s done. You have put me in a most awkward position. How am I to get out of it?”
Miss Bartlett could not think. The days of her energy were over. She was a visitor, not a chaperon, and a discredited visitor at that. She stood with clasped hands while the girl worked herself into the necessary rage.