"And do you really love him?" Helen asked, puzzled by this strange girl, who laughingly held up her soft, white hand, stained and blackened with the juice of the fruit she had been paring, and said: "Do you suppose I would spoil my hands like that and incur _ma chère-mamma's_ displeasure, if Bob were not in the army and I did not care for him? And now that I have confessed so much, allow me to catechise you. Did Mark Ray ever propose and you refuse him?"
"Never!" and Helen's face grew crimson, while Bell continued: "That is funny. Half our circle think so, though how the impression was first given I do not know. Mother told me, but would not tell where she received her information. I heard of it again in a few days, and have reason to believe that Mrs. Banker knows it too and feels a little uncomfortable that her son should be refused when she considers him worthy of the empress herself."
Helen was very white, and her limbs shook as she asked: "And how with Mark and Juno?"
"Oh, off and on," Bell replied; "that is, Juno is always on, while Mark is more uncertain, and Juno really has improved in some respects. As I wrote you once, she is very docile when with Mark, and acts as if trying to atone for something--her old badness, I guess. You are certain you never cared for Mark Ray?"
This was so abrupt and Bell's eyes were so searching that Helen grew giddy for a moment and grasped the back of the chair, as she replied: "I did not say I never cared for him. I said he never proposed; and that is true; he never did."
"And if he had?" Bell continued, never taking her eyes from Helen, who, had she been less agitated, would have denied Bell's right to question her so closely. Now, however, she answered blindly: "I do not know. I cannot tell. I thought him engaged to Juno."
"Well, if that is not the rarest case of cross-purposes that I ever knew," Bell said, wiping her hands upon Aunt Betsy's apron, and preparing to attack the piled up basket just brought in.
Further conversation was impossible, and, with her mind in a perfect tempest of thought, Helen went away, trying to decide what it was best for her to do. Some one had spread the report that she had refused Mark Ray, telling of the refusal, of course, or how else could it have been known? and this accounted for Mrs. Banker's long-continued silence. Since Helen's return to Silverton Mrs. Banker had written two or thee kind, friendly letters, which did her so much good; but these had suddenly ceased, and Helen's last remained as yet unanswered. She saw the reason now, every nerve quivering with pain as she imagined what Mrs. Banker must think of one who could make a refusal public, or what was tenfold worse, pretend to an offer she never received. "She must despise me, and Mark Ray, too, if he has heard of it," she said, resolving one moment to ask Bell to explain to Mrs. Banker, and then changing her mind and concluding to let matters take their course, inasmuch as interference from her might be construed by the mother into undue interest in the son. "Perhaps Bell will do it without my asking," she thought, and this hope did much toward keeping her spirits up on that last day of Katy's stay at home, for she was going back in the morning. Wilford would not leave her, though she begged to stay. He did not like the sad expression of her face, and he must take her where she would have more excitement, hoping thus to win her from her grief, and perhaps induce her to lay aside her black, which would be so serious a hindrance to his enjoyment. But Katy clung to that as to a strict, religious duty, saying to Helen, as in the twilight they sat together up in their old room, talking of the ensuing winter, which would be so different from the last: "If anything besides the feeling that she is so much happier, could reconcile me to baby's loss, it is the knowing that my mourning will keep me from the society in which I could not mingle so soon," and her tears dropped upon the somber robes, which had transformed her so suddenly from the gay, airy creature of fashion into the sober, quiet woman who seemed older, soberer than even Helen herself.