“No; Madge will be up waiting for me,” he reflected. “I may as well meet her and let her know the worst. Poor girl, she'll have to be brave!”
He moved on to his own gate. There was no one on the veranda, as was often the case in warm weather, but in a little pagoda-shaped summer-house on the lawn he descried a white object. It stirred as the hinges of the gate creaked, and he entered, It was Margaret, and she came to him like a spirit across the grass.
“I told you I'd wait,” she reminded him, and her voice sounded strange and even harsh in its guttural tendency. “I thought you'd never come.”
Through all that had passed between him and Fred Walton that night Dealing's anger and resentment had been held in check by sympathy for the man in his desperate plight and despair; but now, as he saw the evidences of his sister's agony written all too plainly upon her young being, his indignation kindled. The scoundrel, the coward, was running away to keep from facing public opinion, yet was leaving this poor, crushed girl to suffer in consequence of his conduct!
“You ought not to have waited,” he reproached her, in a tone she had never heard him use. “Your being here now, looking like this, is an acknowledgment that you actually _care_ for the cowardly cur--you, who ought to--”
“Brother, stop!” The girl clutched his arms. She breathed hard against his breast as she leaned close to him. “'The cowardly cur,' you say--_you_, who have never abused him before.”
“I wonder now that I let him go with a whole bone in his body,” Dearing retorted, raspingly. “I didn't realize what I was doing, or I--”
“Oh, what _do_ you mean?” Margaret interrupted, giving him a quick, impatient shake. “You needn't come here trying to make me believe vile slander. It is easy enough for lies to get circulated in a town noted for its tattling busybodies.”
“I've had his own deliberate confession,” Dearing answered. “With his head hanging in shame and his face covered he told me he was forced by some dishonorable act to leave town, never to return. He didn't tell me what he had done; he said he'd rather not go into it, but that it would all be out to-morrow. Of his own accord he proposed to give you up, and said I might tell Uncle Tom that he'd never see or write to you again. Whatever it is, you ought to have sufficient pride to--”