"You may well ask, my dear," answered the voice of Mrs Latrobe, behind Phoebe. "Your cousin has been conducting herself in a most improper manner--offering gross insults to my guests in my house." "Phoebe!" cried Rhoda, as if she could not believe her ears. "Yes, Phoebe. She really has. I can only fear--indeed, I had almost said hope--that her wits are something impaired. What think you of her telling a gentleman who had acted in a most noble and honourable manner--exactly as a gentleman should do--that she could not have believed him capable of such baseness? and she cried shame on him!" "Not Phoebe!" exclaimed Rhoda again, looking from one to the other very much as Phoebe had done. "Why, Phoebe, what does all this mean?" "Oh, Rhoda, I can't tell you!" said Phoebe, sobbing, for the reaction had come. "Mother, you will have to tell her. I can't." "Of course I shall tell her," calmly answered Mrs Latrobe. "I came for that very thing. Rhoda, my dear, I am sure you are a maid of sense and discretion." "I hope so, Madam." "So do I, child: and therefore you will hear me calmly, and not fly into passions like that silly maid yonder. My dear, you must have remembered, I am certain, that when you promised yourself to Mr Welles, you were in a very different situation from now." Rhoda only bowed. Perhaps, on that subject, she was afraid to trust her voice. "And, of course, it has also occurred to you, my dear, that this being the case, you could not in honour hold Mr Welles bound to you any longer, if he wished to be free?" "But we don't wish to be free," said Rhoda, in a puzzled tone. "You are mistaken, my dear, so far as one of you is concerned. Perhaps it had been yet more graceful had you been the one to loose the bond: yet Mr Welles has done it with so infinite a grace and spirit that I can scarce regret your omission. My dear, you are now entirely free. He sets you completely at liberty, and has retired from all pretension to you." "But what, Aunt Anne--I do not understand you!" exclaimed Rhoda, in accents of bewildered amazement, which had a ring of agony beneath, as though she was struggling against the comprehension of a grief she was reluctant to face. "Surely, my dear, you must have understood me," said Mrs Latrobe. "Mr Welles resigns his suit to you." "He has given me up?" bursts from Rhoda's lips. "He has entirely given you up. You cannot have really expected anything else?" "I thought _he_ was true!" said Rhoda through her set teeth. "Are you sure you understood him? Phoebe, you tell me,--did he mean that?" "O Rhoda! poor Rhoda! I am afraid he did!" said Phoebe, as distinctly as tears would let her.