"That is all over now," responded she. "Of course to anybody else I shouldn't own that there ever was anything; but whatever there may have been is ended. He understands that perfectly."
For some minutes Berenice sat smoothing the invalid's hand, the firelight glancing on her face and hair.
"How pretty you are, Bee," Mrs. Frostwinch said at length. Then without pause she added: "Is there anybody else?"
Bee sank backward into the shadow with a quick, instinctive movement, dropping the hand she held.
"You are as transparent as glass," she said. "Come, who is it?"
Berenice hesitated an instant, then threw herself forward, bending over the hand of her companion until her face was hidden.
"There isn't really anybody; and besides I've insulted him so that he never could help hating me. No, there isn't anybody, Cousin Anna; and there never will be. I know I should despise him if he wasn't angry; and besides," she added with the air of suddenly recollecting herself, "I hate him for what he said."
"That is evident," the other assented smilingly. "I could see at once that you hated him. But who is it?"
"Why, there isn't anybody, I tell you. Of course I thought about him after he saved my life, but"--
"Oh," interrupted Mrs. Frostwinch. "Then it is Mr. Wynne. But I thought"--
"He isn't a priest any more," Berenice struck in, replying to the unspoken doubt as if it had been in her own mind. "I heard yesterday that he has left the Clergy House for good, and is staying with Mrs. Staggchase."
"He overtook me on the street yesterday."
Mrs. Frostwinch put out her hand with a loving gesture.
"Bee," said she tenderly, "I want you to be happy. You've been like a daughter to me ever since your mother died, and I've thought of you almost as if you were my own child. If this is the man to make you happy"--
But Bee stooped forward and stopped the words with kisses.
"I can't talk of him," she said, "and he will never be anything to me. He is angry, and he has a right to be. He"--
The entrance of the nurse interrupted them, and Berenice made haste to get away before there was opportunity for further question. In her anxiety to know something more of Mr. Wynne, Mrs. Frostwinch sent for Mrs. Staggchase, who came in the next day.