"Because he never heard you were going. He got a letter after you had gone, and then he wrote you about the bad luck nonsense. There must have been some strange defect in your mail arrangements."
"I always thought some letters must have gone astray and miscarried between us. I knew he couldn't be so negligent. I'd have taken pains to clear it up, if I hadn't promised my father just at that time--" She stopped, unable to control her voice longer. Her lips were quivering.
"Speaking of your father," said Larcher, "you must have got a subsequent letter from Davenport, because he sent it registered, and the receipt came back with your father's signature."
"No, I never got that, either," said Florence, before the inference struck her. When it did, she gazed from one to the other with a helpless, wounded look, and blushed as if the shame were her own.
Edna Hill's eyes blazed with indignation, then softened in pity for her friend. She turned to Larcher in a very calling-to-account manner.
"Why didn't you tell me all this before?"
"I didn't think it was necessary. And besides, he never told me about the letters till the night before last."
"And all this time that poor young man has thought Florence tossed him over because of some ridiculous notion about bad luck?"
"Well, more or less,--and the general fickleness of the sex."
"General fick--! And you, having seen Florence, let him go on thinking so?"
"But I didn't know Miss Kenby was the lady he meant. If you'd only told me it was for her you wanted news of him--"
"Stupid, you might have guessed! But I think it's about time he had some news of _her_. He ought to know she wasn't actuated by any such paltry, childish motive."
"By George, I agree with you!" cried Larcher, with a sudden energy. "If you could see the effect on the man, of that false impression, Miss Kenby! I don't mean to say that his state of mind is entirely due to that; he had causes enough before. But it needed only that to take away all consolation, to stagger his faith, to kill his interest in life."
"Has it made him so bitter?" asked Florence, sadly.
"I shouldn't call the effect bitterness. He has too lofty a mind for strong resentment. That false impression has only brought him to the last stage of indifference. I should say it was the finishing touch to making his life a wearisome drudgery, without motive or hope."