How Ruth Burnham got away from their volubility and their playful accusations and their congratulations she was never afterward able to clearly explain, even to herself. She knew that her brain felt on fire, and every nerve in her body seemed to be quivering, but she also knew that she had one supreme determination, not by word or glance to betray consternation or surprise or indeed feeling of any sort. Since these women believed that she had deceived them, let them by all means continue to do so, at least until she could determine what she thought, or what she was to say.
She knew that she preserved her outward calm, and made some commonplace reply to the eager questioning exclamations showered upon her. She remembered murmuring something about young people's secrets being sacred to themselves, and then she got herself away and walked the seven squares between her and her home, and wished that there were more of them, that she might have time to steady herself and plan what step to take next. How, for instance, was she to break this terrible piece of news to Erskine?
To her astonishment she found that she was giving full credit to the story. Although the details had been too minute and the source of information too terribly reliable to admit of reasonable doubt, yet her reason told her that she ought to be able to turn in contempt from such a story. How was it possible for Alice Warder to be guilty of such long-drawn-out unpardonable hypocrisy as this? Alice Warder of all women in the world! How had it been possible for her to deceive Erskine in this way? Why had she done it? What could have been her motive? Had she simply and deliberately flirted with him, to show that insufferable old man that there were others besides his son who wanted her? Poor Erskine! poor trusting, deceived heart! What could his mother do or say to soften such a revelation as this! Finally she walked quite past her own door, adding several more blocks to the already long distance, before she had herself under sufficient control to meet her son. For the first time in her life she was glad that he was not in when she reached home; and glad again that when he came a friend was with him, who remained to dinner. This enabled her to watch Erskine closely, without his observing it, and to determine whether he might have heard from some other source the strange news.