The girl laid her head upon her sister's shoulder, and there let herself loose from all restraint. "You _know_ what is the matter," she sobbed; "you know as well as I do what is the matter--that it is Paul Brion who worries me so and makes me so utterly wretched." "Paul Brion! _He_ worry you, Patty--_he_ make you wretched?" "You have always been delicate and considerate, Elizabeth--you have never said anything--but I know you know all about it, and how spoiled I am, and how spoiled everything is because of him. I hate to talk of it--I can't bear even you to see that I am fretting about him--but I can't help it! and I know you understand. When I have had just one good cry," she concluded, with a fresh and violent burst of tears, "perhaps I shall get on better." Elizabeth stared at the wall over her sister's head in dumb amazement, evidently not deserving the credit for perspicacity accorded to her. "Do you mean," she said slowly, "do you really mean--" "Yes," sobbed Patty, desperate, for the moment dead to shame. "Oh, how blind--how wickedly blind--how stupid--how selfish I have been!" Elizabeth exclaimed, after another pause in which to collect her shocked and bewildered faculties. "I never dreamt about it, my darling--never, for a single moment. I thought--I always had the settled impression that you did not like him." "I don't like him," said Patty, fiercely, lifting herself up. "I love him--I _love_ him! I must say it right out once, if I never speak another word," and she bent her head back a little, and stretched out her arms with an indescribable gesture as if she saw him standing before her. "He is a man--a real, true, strong man--who works, and thinks, and lives--lives! It is all serious with him, as I wanted it to be with me--and I _might_ have been worthy of him! A little while ago we were so near to each other--so near that we almost _touched_--and now no two people could be farther apart. I have done him wrong--I have been a wicked fool, but I am punished for it out of all proportion. _He_ flirt with a married woman! What could I have been dreaming of? Oh, how _disgusting_ I must be to have allowed such an idea to come into my head! And yet it was only a little thing, Elizabeth, when you come to think of it relatively--the only time I ever really did him injustice, and it was only for a moment. No one can always do what is right and fair without making a mistake sometimes--it was just a mistake for want of thinking. But it has taken him from me as completely as if I had committed suicide, and was dead and buried and done with. It has made him _hate_ me. No wonder! If he cared about me, I wouldn't be too proud to beg his pardon, but he doesn't--he doesn't! And so I must face it out, or else he will think I am running after him, and he will despise me more than he does already." "But if he was doing no harm," said Elizabeth, soothingly, "he could not suppose that you thought he was."