"
"You know very well," she said, "that you never intended to let me
marry him. As I said to you last night, I feel very much aggrieved,
Major Mallett. You had said you would be my friend, and yet you let
this go on when you could have stopped it at once. You let me get
talked about with that man, and you would have gone on letting me
get still more talked about before you interfered. That was not
kind or friendly of you."
"But, Bertha," he remonstrated, "the fact that we had not been
friends, and that he had beaten me in a variety of matters, was no
reason in the world why I should interfere, still less why you
should not marry him. When I was stupid enough to tell you that
story, years ago, I stated that I had no grounds for saying that it
was he who played that trick upon my boat, and it would have been
most unfair on my part to have brought that story up again."
"Quite so, but there was the other story."
"What other story?" Frank asked in great surprise.
"The story that George Lechmere came and told me two days ago," she
said, gravely.
"George Lechmere! You don't mean to say--"
"I do mean to say so. He behaved like a real friend, and came to
tell me the story of Martha Bennett.
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