promise."

"Bravo, Tommy! You can't get over logic like that, Florence, dear, and
your promise did inaugurate a wrong--a wrong against yourself."

"Well, then, it's allowable to wrong oneself," said Florence.

"But not one's friends--one's true, disinterested friends. And as for
that other promise of yours--that _fearful_ promise!--you can't deny you
wronged somebody by that; somebody you had no right to wrong."

"It was a choice between him and my father," replied Florence, in a low
voice, and turning very red.

"Very well; which deserved to be sacrificed?" cried Edna, her eyes and
tone showing that the subject was a heating one. "Which was likely to
suffer more by the sacrifice? You know perfectly well fathers _don't_ die
in those cases, and consequently your father's hysterics _must_ have been
put on for effect. Oh, don't tell me!--it makes me wild to think of it!
Your father would have been all right in a week; whereas the other man's
whole life is darkened."

"Don't say that, dear," pleaded Florence, gently. "Men soon get over such
things."

"Not so awfully soon;--not sincere men. Their views of life are changed,
for all time. And _this_ man seems to grow more and more melancholy, if
what Tom says is true."

"What I say?" exclaimed Larcher.