After a week had elapsed Cornelia went over one morning to see her friend.  But by this time Arenta knew everything.  Her brother Rem had been with her and confessed all to his sister.  It had not been a pleasant meeting by any means.  She heard the story with indignation, but contrived to feel that somehow Rem was not so much to blame as Cornelia, and other people.

“You are right served,” she said to her brother, “for meddling with foreigners, and especially for mixing your love affairs up with an English girl.  Proud, haughty creatures all of them!  And you are a very fool to tell any woman such a—­crime.  Yes, it is a crime.  I won’t say less.  That girl over the way nearly died, and you would have let her die.  It was a shame.  I don’t love Cornelia—­but it was a shame.”

“The letter was addressed to me, Arenta.”

“Fiddlesticks!  You knew it was not yours.  You knew it was Hyde’s.  Where is it now?”

She asked the question in her usual dominant way, and Rem did not feel able to resist it.  He looked for a moment at the angry woman, and was subdued by her air of authority.  He opened his pocketbook and from a receptacle in it, took the fateful letter.  She seized and read it, and then without a word, or a moment’s hesitation threw it into the fire.

Rem blustered and fumed, and she stood smiling defiantly at him.  “You are like all criminals,” she said; “you must keep something to accuse yourself with.  I love you too well to permit you to carry that bit of paper about you.  It has worked you harm enough.  What are you going to do?  Is Miss Darner’s refusal quite final?”

“Quite.  It was even scornful.”

“Plenty of nice girls in Boston.”

“I cannot go back to Boston.”

“Why then?”

“Because Mary’s cousin has told the whole affair.”

“Nonsense!”

“She has.  I know it.  Men, whom I had been friendly with, got out of my way; women excused themselves at their homes, and did not see me on the streets.  I have no doubt all Boston is talking of the affair.”

“Then come back to New York.  New Yorkers attend strictly to their own love affairs.  Father will stand by you; and I will.”

“Father will not.  He called me a scoundrel, when I told him last night, and advised me to go to the frontier.  Joris Van Heemskirk will not talk, but madame will chatter for him, and I could not bear to meet Doctor Moran.  As for Captain Jacobus, he would invent new words and oaths to abuse me with, and Aunt Angelica would, of course, say amen to all he says;—­and there are others.”

“Yes, there is Lord Hyde.”

“Curse him!  But I intended to give him his letter—­now you have burnt it.”

“You intended nothing of the kind, Rem.  Go away as soon as you can.  I don’t want to know where you go just yet.  New York is impossible, and Boston is impossible.  Father says go to the frontier, I say go South.  What you have done, you have done; and it cannot be undone; so don’t carry it about with you.  And I would let women alone—­they are beyond you—­go in for politics.”