" Then, as Babie
made no answer, Sydney gave her a squeeze, and whispered, "I know!"
"Who told you?" asked Babie, with eyes on the fire.
"Mamma, when I was crazy with Cecil for caring for a pretty face
instead of real stuff. She thought it would hurt Duke if I went on."
"Does he care still?" said Babie, in a low voice.
"Oh, Babie, don't you feel how much?"
"Do you know, Sydney, sometimes I can't believe it. I'm sure I have
no right to complain of being thought a childish, unfeeling little
wretch, when I recollect how hard, and cold, and impertinent I was to
him three years ago."
"It was three years ago, and we were very foolish then," consolingly
murmured the wisdom of twenty, not without recollections of her own.
"I hope it was only foolishness," said Barbara; "but I have only now
begun to understand the rights of it, only I could not bear the
thoughts of seeing him again. And now he is so kind!"
"Do you wish you had?"
"Not that. I don't think anything but fuss and worry would have come
of it then. I was only fifteen, and my mother could never have let
it go on, and even if-—; but what I am so grieved and ashamed at is
my fancying him not enough of a man for such a self-sufficient ape as
I was. And now I have seen more of the world, and know what men are,
I see his generosity, and that his patient fight with ill-health to
do his best and his duty, is really very great and good.
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