Bab - A Sub Deb - Page 13/77

"I'm so helpless, Jane." I put all the despair I could into my voice.

For after all, if they were going to talk about my private Affairs

behind my back, I felt that they might as well have something to talk

about. As Jane's second couzin once removed is in this school and as

Jane will probably write her all about it, I hope this Theme is read

aloud in class, so she will get it all straight. Jane is imaginative and

may have a wrong idea of things.

"Don't give in. Let them bully you. They can't really do anything. And

they're scared. Leila is positively sick."

"I've promised to write and break it off," I said in a tence tone.

"If he really loves you," said Jane, "the letter won't matter." There

was a thrill in her voice. Had I not been uneasy at my deciet, I to

would have thrilled.

Some fresh muffins came in just then and I was starveing. But I waved

them away, and stood staring at the fire.

I am writing all of this as truthfully as I can. I am not defending

myself. What I did I was driven to, as any one can see. It takes a real

shock to make the average Familey wake up to the fact that the youngest

daughter is not the Familey baby at seventeen. All I was doing was

furnishing the shock. If things turned out badly, as they did, it

was because I rather overdid the thing. That is all. My motives were

perfectly ireproachible.

Well, they fell on the muffins like pigs, and I could hardly stand it.

So I wandered into the den, and it occurred to me to write the letter

then. I felt that they all expected me to do something anyhow.

If I had never written the wretched letter things would be better now.

As I say, I overdid. But everything had gone so smoothly all day that I

was decieved. But the real reason was a new set of furs. I had secured

the dresses and the promise of the necklace on a Poem and a Photograph,

and I thought that a good love letter might bring a muff. It all shows

that it does not do to be grasping.

HAD I NOT WRITTEN THE LETTER, THERE WOULD HAVE BEEN NO TRADGEDY.

But I wrote it and if I do say it, it was a LETTER. I commenced it

"Darling," and I said I was mad to see him, and that I would always love

him. But I told him that the Familey objected to him, and that this was

to end everything between us. They had started the phonograph in the

library, and were playing "The Rosary." So I ended with a verse from

that. It was really a most affecting letter. I almost wept over it

myself, because, if there had been a Harold, it would have broken his

Heart.