“My dear boy,” he said, “some things happen in this world despite ourselves. I know what you mean now, but perhaps you fancy you did me a greater wrong than was truly the case.”
“No; I did not do you a wrong!” was Dick’s surprising statement. “I believe I did you a good turn; but, at the same time, it was a piece of unfairness and treachery, for I knew you had cared for Inza Burrage—I knew I had no right to come between you and her.”
“You are strangely contradictory, Starbright. If you did not do me a wrong, if what you did was a good thing for me, why should I not remain your friend? Why should I feel resentment toward you?”
“Because you do not know—yet. I know, for I have seen with my own eyes. Oh, she is the handsomest girl in all the world, Merriwell, but she is just as false and fickle as she is handsome!”
“You are excited and hasty, else you would not make such a charge against her, Starbright!” he declared.
“Excited I may be, but I am not hasty. I have a reason, Merriwell, you may be sure of that. I don’t wish to get rid of any of the blame, but if she were not fickle, why did she so readily turn from you to me?”
“Because she felt certain that between us there could never be a tie stronger than mere friendship.”
“Why did she feel certain of that? Merriwell, are you saying this just to make me feel less like a sneak?”
“Are you sure?” asked Dick, with great eagerness. “It would be like you to treat a fellow generous in that way. How do you know Inza felt as you say?”
Starbright seemed more surprised than ever.
“I can hardly believe it! Why, all the fellows thought her struck on you! You seemed to be the only one she cared for.”
“We were the best of friends, my boy; but it is the truth that Inza herself told me we could never be anything but friends. I do not say this to soothe your feelings, but because I do not wish you to regard yourself or Inza in a wrong light. She had a right to like you, Dick, and I don’t wonder that she did. You are——”
The freshman stopped Merry with a savage gesture.
“Don’t talk that way!” he cried. “Wait till you know everything! When and where was it that she told you this?”
“It was one year ago last summer, on the veranda of the little hotel in the town of Maplewood, where I was managing a baseball-team. The season had closed, and the time of separation had come. Inza had been spending a few weeks in Maplewood. On the evening before the final game we were together on the veranda, and, during the course of our talk, she frankly and plainly told me that she had outgrown her first foolish infatuation for me, and that in the future we were to be nothing more than the best of friends.”