I oughtn't
to have let her thank you for those seedsman's catalogues; but I thought
it couldn't do any harm. And then, after your letters began to come, we
didn't know just when to stop them. To tell you the truth, Mr.
Langbourne, we got so interested we couldn't _bear_ to stop them. You
wrote so much about your life in New York, that it was like a visit
there every week; and it's pretty quiet at Upper Ashton in the winter
time."
She seemed to refer this fact to Langbourne for sympathetic
appreciation; he said mechanically, "Yes."
She resumed: "But when your picture came, I said it had _got_ to stop;
and so we just sent back my picture,--or I don't know but what Barbara
did it without asking me,--and we did suppose that would be the last of
it; when you wrote back you were coming here, we didn't believe you
really would unless we said so. That's all there is about it; and if
there is anybody to blame, I am the one. Barbara would never have done
it in the world if I hadn't put her up to it."
In those words the implication that Miss Bingham had operated the whole
affair finally unfolded itself. But distasteful as the fact was to
Langbourne, and wounding as was the realization that he had been led on
by this witness of his infatuation for the sake of the entertainment
which his letters gave two girls in the dull winter of a mountain
village, there was still greater pain, with an additional embarrassment,
in the regret which the words conveyed.
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