“Charlie is very full of his own concerns. He has not much sympathy with me. All that he wants is to get back to Oxford.”
“To Oxford in the vacation? What would he do there?”
“Oh, Bee, how nice of Charlie! I know they do sometimes, Gerald Lyon tells me; but I never thought that Charlie----”
“No,” said Bee, “and I don’t feel very sure now, there is someone---- to whom he writes such long letters----”
“Oh, Bee! This is far, far more interesting than reading! Do you know who she is? Does he tell you about her?”
“Her name is Laura,” said Bee, “that is all I know.”
“Oh,” cried Betty, “Charlie too!” And then a flush came over the girl’s uplifted face. Bee, poor Bee, absorbed in the many things which had dawned upon her which were beyond Betty, did not observe the colour nor even that significant “too” which had come to Betty’s lips in spite of herself.
“I think he met her or someone belonging to her--at the Academy to-day; and that’s why he hasn’t come---- Oh, Betty, I am not happy about it--I am not happy at all!”
Betty put her arms round Bee and kissed her. She thought it was the remembrance of her own disappointment and disaster which made her sister cry out in this heart-broken way. Betty looked very wistfully in Bee’s eyes. She was more sorry than words could say. If she could have done anything in the world “to make it all come right” she would have done so, and in the bottom of her heart she still had a conviction that all would “come right.” “Oh, Bee, Bee!” she cried, “cannot anything be done? If only--only you would have listened to his mother!--Bee----”
Bee held up a warning finger. “Do you think it is myself I am thinking of?” she said, and then, wringing her hands, she added, “I don’t know what harm we have done to bring it on, but, oh! I think we are in the hands of fate.”