"BAB A SUB-DEB" - читать интересную книгу автора (Rinehart Mary Roberts)

with you."
"I'm so helpless, Jane." I put all the despair I could into
my voice. For after all, if they were going to talk about my
private Affairs behind my back, I felt that they might as well
have something to talk about. As Jane's second couzin once
removed is in this school and as Jane will probably write her
all about it, I hope this Theme is read aloud in class, so she
will get it all straight. Jane is imaginative and may have a
wrong idea of things.
"Don't give in. Let them bully you. They can't really do
anything. And they're scared. Leila is positively sick."
"I've promised to write and break it off," I said in a
tence tone.
"If he really loves you," said Jane, "the letter won't
matter." There was a thrill in her voice. Had I not been uneasy
at my deciet, I to would have thrilled.
Some fresh muffins came in just then and I was starveing.
But I waved them away, and stood staring at the fire.
I am writing all of this as truthfully as I can. I am not
defending myself. What I did I was driven to, as any one can
see. It takes a real shock to make the average Familey wake up
to the fact that the youngest daughter is not the Familey baby
at seventeen. All I was doing was furnishing the shock. If
things turned out badly, as they did, it was because I rather
overdid the thing. That is all. My motives were perfectly
ireproachible.
Well, they fell on the muffins like pigs, and I could
hardly stand it. So I wandered into the den, and it occurred to
me to write the letter then. I felt that they all expected me to
do something anyhow.
If I had never written the wretched letter things would be
better now. As I say, I overdid. But everything had gone so
smoothly all day that I was decieved. But the real reason was a
new set of furs. I had secured the dresses and the promise of
the necklace on a Poem and a Photograph, and I thought that a
good love letter might bring a muff. It all shows that it does
not do to be grasping.
_Had I not written the letter, there would have been no
tradgedy_.
But I wrote it and if I do say it, it was a _letter_. I
commenced it "Darling," and I said I was mad to see him, and
that I would always love him. But I told him that the Familey
objected to him, and that this was to end everything between us.
They had started the phonograph in the library, and were playing
"The Rosary." So I ended with a verse from that. It was really
a most affecting letter. I almost wept over it myself, because,
if there had been a Harold, it would have broken his Heart.
Of course I meant to give it to Hannah to mail, and she
would give it to mother. Then, after the family had read it and
it had got in its work, including the set of furs, they were