She led him toward the chair. He sat and, bending forward, leaned his head upon his hands. “Go ahead,” he groaned. “I’m listening.” She told him the whole story, beginning with her learning from Millard of his experience the night of the accident, of her early morning call upon the Campton girl, of her long talk with Esther, at the big house and afterward there at the cottage. Then she went on to tell how Esther and Bob Griffin had come to say good-by, how she had argued and pleaded to shake their determination to go away together that very night. Then of the marriage. “What could I do?” she pleaded, desperately. “They wouldn’t listen. They would go. There was only one thing I saw that must be done and I did it. I saw them married, legally married by a Harniss minister right in this very room. We’ve got that to be thankful for--and it’s a lot. There can’t be any gossip started, for I can nail it before it starts. Foster, as I see it, all you can do--all any of us can do--is make the best of it. Tell the whole town you think it is all right, even if you are sure it is all wrong. And it isn’t all wrong. It is terribly hard for you to give her up to somebody else, but you would have had to do it sometime. And she has got a good husband; as sure as I stand here I do believe that.” She finished. Still he sat there, his head upon his hands. She ventured once more to put her hand upon his shoulder. “If you knew how I have been dreadin’ your comin’ here to-night,” she said, wearily. “If you only knew! If only somebody else could have told you. But there wasn’t any one else; I had to do it. You _poor_ man! I--I-- Oh, dear! What a world this is! Foster, you _will_ believe I am sorry, won’t you?” He drew a deep breath. Then, placing his hands upon the chair arm, he slowly lifted his big body and stood erect. His face was haggard, his eyes heavy, he looked, so she thought, as if he had been through a long sickness. And the tone in which he spoke was hollowed and, at first, listless. “Sorry!” he repeated. “Sorry! Humph!... Yes, I guess so. You are sorry and so is she--she says so in her letter. I suppose that damned cub she has run away with is sorry, too. Yes, you are all sorry, but not so sorry but what you could do the thing, play the dirty trick you meant to play all along.... All right! All right!” with sudden savageness. “She will be sorrier by and by. Let her go to the devil. She has started that way already. Let her go. And you, and the gang who will come tiptoeing around to-morrow telling me how sorry they are, may go with her.... Well, you have said all you wanted to, haven’t you? I can go home now, I suppose--eh?”