"Yes, I do now, but I had forgotten. I was so stunned then, so bewildered, that it made no impression. I did not think he meant Morris. Helen, do you believe he meant Morris?" and lifting up her face, Katy looked at her sister with a wistfulness which told how anxiously she waited for the answer.
"I know that he meant Morris," Helen replied. "Bell thinks so, too. So does her father, and both bade me tell you to revoke your decision, to marry Dr. Grant, with whom you will be so happy."
"I cannot. It is too late. I told him no, and, Helen, I told him a falsehood, too, which I wish I might take back," she added. "I said I was sorry he ever loved me, when I was not, for the knowing that he had made me very happy. My conscience has smitten me cruelly since for that falsehood told, not intentionally, for I did not consider what I said."
Here was an idea at which Helen caught at once. She knew just how conscientious Katy was, and by working upon this principle she hoped to persuade her into going over to Linwood and telling Morris that when she said she was sorry he loved her she did not mean it. But this Katy would not do. Helen could tell him, if she liked, but she must not encourage him to hope for a recantation of all she had said to him. She meant the rest. She could not be his wife.
Early the next morning Helen went to Linwood, and the same afternoon Morris returned her call. He had been there two or three times since his return from Washington, but not since Katy's refusal, and her cheeks were scarlet as he met him in the parlor and tried to be natural. He did not look unhappy. He was not taking his rejection very hard, after all, she thought, and the little lady felt a very little piqued to find him so cheerful, and even gay, when she had scarcely known a moment's quiet since the day she carried him the custards, and forgot to bring away her umbrella. As it had rained that day, so it did now, a decided, energetic rain, which set in after Morris came, and precluded the possibility of his going home that night.
"He would catch his death of cold," Aunt Betsy said, while Helen, too, joined her entreaties until Morris consented, and the carriage which came around for him at dark returned to Linwood, with the message that the doctor would pass the night at Deacon Barlow's. A misty, rainy night, who does not enjoy it when sitting by a cheerful fire, they listen dreamily to the falling rain sifting softly through the leafless trees, and answering to the faint sighing of the autumn wind. Morris enjoyed it very much, and but for the green glasses he still wore would have looked and appeared like his former self as he sat in his armchair, now holding the skein of yarn which Aunt Betsy wound, now talking with the deacon of the probable exchange of all the prisoners, a theme which quickened Helen's pulse and sent the blood to her pale cheeks, and again standing by Katy as she played his favorite airs, his rich bass voice mingling with hers and Helen's, the three making finer music, Aunt Betsy said, than that for which she paid two dollars at the playhouse.