Page:Life's little ironies (1894).pdf/158

“I wonder where that young man is with the horse and trap?’ said her former admirer to his companion, “I hope we sha’n’t have to wait here long. I told him ten o’clock precisely.”

“Have you got her present safe ?”

“Phyliss? Oh yes. It is in this trunk. I hope it will please her,”

“Of course it will, What woman would not be pleased with euch a handsome peace-offering ?”

“ Well—she deserves it, I’ve treated her rather badly. But she has been in my mind these last two days much more than I should care to confess to everybody. Ah, well; I’ll say no more about that. It cannot be that she is so bad as they make out. I am quite sure that a girl of her good wit would know better than to get entangled with any of those Hanoverian soldiers, I won't believe it of her, and there's an end on’t,”

More words in the same strain were casually dropped aa the two men waited; words which revealed to her, as by « sudden illumination, the enormity of her conduct. The conversation was at length cut off by the arrival of the man with the vehicle. The luggage was placed in it, and they mounted and were driven on in the direction from which she had just come,

Phyilis was so conscience-stricken that she was at first inclined to follow them; but a moment’s reflection led her to feel that it would only be bare justice to Matthaus to wait till he arrived, and explain candidly that she had changed her mind—difficult as the struggle would be when she stood face to face with him. She bitterly reproached herself for having believed reports which represented Huraphrey Gould as false to his engagement, when, from what she now heard from hiy own lips, she gathered that he had been living full of trust in her. But she knew well