* * * * *
As the door closed on them Alice looked furtively around.
"What is it, Ally?" Gwenda said.
"Don't you know?" she whispered.
"No. You haven't told me anything."
"You don't know why I sent for you? Can't you think?"
Gwenda was silent.
"Gwenda--I'm in the most awful trouble----" She looked around again.
Then she spoke rapidly and low with a fearful hoarse intensity.
"I won't tell them, but I'll tell you. They've been trying to get it
out of me by bullying, but I wasn't going to let them. Gwenda--they
wanted to make me tell straight out, there--before Steven. And I
wouldn't--I wouldn't. They haven't got a word out of me. But it's
true, what they say."
She paused.
"About me."
"My lamb, I don't know what they say about you."
"They say that I'm going to----"
Crouching where she sat, bent forward, staring with her stare, she
whispered.
"Oh--Ally--darling----"
"I'm not ashamed, not the least little bit ashamed. And I don't care
what they think of me. But I'm not going to tell them. I've told _you_
because I know you won't hate me, you won't think me awful. But I
won't tell Mary, and I won't tell Papa. Or Steven. If I do they'll
make me marry him."
"Was it--was it----"
Ally's instinct heard the name that her sister spared her.
"Yes--Yes--Yes. It is."
She added, "I don't care."
"Ally--what made you do it?"
"I don't--know.
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