"Why have you come here?" she said to Virginia. "You don't suppose I ran
risks like that, to possess myself of a thing which I meant to give up.
Oh! you need not look as though you were going to spring at me. I have
not got it here, I can assure you. I parted with it hours ago!"
"To whom?" Virginia demanded.
"My father will find out some day, perhaps," Stella answered. "I don't
see that it's so much his affair. The men who have to pay for their
folly are the men who deserve to pay. I see that my father was too
cunning to write his name down with theirs."
"You mean," Virginia demanded, "that you have not given it to Mr.
Littleson and his friends?"
"Not I!" Stella laughed,--"although they offered me one hundred
thousand dollars for it."
Virginia sat down on the bed. She had not slept all night, and she had
eaten no breakfast.
"Stella," she said, looking at her cousin with her big eyes full of
tears, and her voice becoming unsteady, "you have done a very, very
cruel thing. You have ruined my life. Your father had done so much for
my people, and now he is going to stop it all and send me back to them.
You can't imagine what it means to be thrown back into such poverty.
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