"It's been a great trial," Mrs. Bayford sighed, "and it isn't over yet. In fact, I don't know but what it's only just beginning."
"Wasn't he—desirable?"
"Oh yes; very much so, and is so still. It wasn't that. He was all that any one could wish—old family, position, title, good looks, everything."
"But if Marion liked him, and he liked her—?"
"I could explain it to you better if you knew more about men."
"I do know a—a little," Miss Lucilla ventured to assert, shyly.
"There is a case in which a little is not enough. You've got to understand a man's capacity for loving one woman and being fascinated by another. I think they call it double consciousness."
"I don't think it's very honorable," Miss Lucilla declared, in disapproval.
"A man doesn't stop to think of honor, my dear, when he's in a grand passion. Bienville has honor written in his very countenance, but this was an occasion when he couldn't get it into play. It was perfectly tragic. He had already spoken to Robert Grimston in the manliest way—told all about himself—found out how much Marion would have as her dot—and got permission to pay her his addresses—when all came to nothing because of another woman."
With this as an introduction it was natural that Mrs. Bayford should go on to repeat the oft-told tale in its entirety, lending it a light that no one had given to it yet. With the information she already possessed from Diane's letter it was impossible for Lucilla not to recognize all the characters as readily as Derek Pruyn had done, while she had the advantage over him of knowing Marion Grimston's place in the action. It was a dreadful story, and if Miss Lucilla was not more profoundly shocked it was because Mrs. Bayford, by overshooting the mark, rendered it incredible. None the less she agreed with Mrs. Bayford on the main point she had come to urge, that Diane, on one side, and Marion and Bienville, on the other, should be kept, if possible, from meeting.