“I am going to tell you just the whole truth,” said Ivy, drying her eyes and looking straight up at Evereld with an air of resolute courage that made her winsome little face actually beautiful. “I did love Ralph once. At first he was just a sort of hero to me, but in Scotland when we were all so miserable and he was always trying to help me, then I began to love him; and when the Skoots disappeared and left us stranded at Forres I couldn’t bear to be parted from him and let him see that I cared. I knew he understood; for he showed me that it would not do for us to stay together when the company dispersed, and he told me how he cared for you, not of course saying your name, but I knew he meant you. At first it made me angry and miserable, but I liked him so for being true, and for speaking straightforwardly as very few men do to women; and always he made me feel that he respected me and liked and trusted me. When later on the Brintons told me he was engaged to you I was able to be glad of it--I was indeed; and when Myra told me the other day that you believed such a lie about me, and I guessed at once it was all her doing--why it seemed as if she had trodden under foot the very best part of me, and afterwards I didn’t much care what I did. I think I could almost have married Mr. Vane-Ffoulkes.” “That would have been an awful fate,” said Evereld with a shudder, as she realised how much harm her ready suspicions had done. “Ivy dear, you must promise me never to let anyone come between us again. Ralph and I are always your friends--do believe that once for all, or I shall never feel at rest about you.” They kissed each other warmly and the misunderstanding was quite at an end, leaving them much closer friends than they had been before. To set things straight with Myra Brinton would probably not prove so easy, but Evereld was very anxious to effect a reconciliation before she went to London. Partly with a view to this, and partly because she had not yet seen the “Merchant of Venice” she got Ralph to take her that night behind the scenes. Unlike so many of the modern theatres the old theatre at Bath in which Mrs. Siddons had often acted in former days could boast a comfortable green room, and here, she and Ralph and Helen Orme did their best to draw Ivy and Myra Brinton into more pleasant relations.