"
His mother let the paper drop from her hands. "Philip! You haven't sent
this!"
"Yes, I have. It wasn't what I wanted to make it, but I wished to get
the detestable experience out of my mind, and it was the best I could do
at the moment. Don't you like it?"
"Oh--" She seemed beginning to say something, but without saying anything
she took the fallen leaf up and read it again.
"Well!" he demanded, with impatience.
"Oh, you may have been right. I hope you've not been wrong."
"Mother!"
"She deserved the severest things you could say; and yet--"
"Well?"
"Perhaps she was punished enough already."
"What do you mean?"
"I don't like your being-vindictive."
"Vindictive?"
"Being so terribly just, then." She added, at his blank stare, "This is
killing, Philip."
He gave a bitter laugh. "I don't think it will kill her. She isn't that
kind."
"She's a girl," his mother said, with a kind of sad absence.
"But not a single-minded girl, you warned me. I wish I could have taken
your warning. It would have saved me from playing the fool before myself
and giving myself away to Armiger, and letting him give himself away.
I don't think Miss Brown will suffer much before she dies. She will 'get
together,' as she calls it, with that other girl and have 'a real good
time' over it.
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