"I was going to say, 'Except for you.'"
"I—er—she seems to have got over that nonsense now. I must confess it gave me rather a start when I came in from a smoke in the garden yesterday, and found her sitting with Marie in the yellow salon. For a minute I was afraid—well, I hardly know of what."
"Dio! You didn't think she'd try to do Marie a mischief?"
"No. Hardly that. But it passed through my mind that she might try to make trouble between us. Not that she could."
"Did you—don't answer unless you care to—ever tell Marie about Idina?"
"Not till yesterday, after her call. It never occurred to me. Idina had gone out of my life before Marie came into it, and she was never anything to me."
"I know. It was the other way round. But—you were good to her, and cousinly, and I suppose she misunderstood a little."
"I never realized that, until she was going to America, and she hinted—er—that she wouldn't care about getting the money if it weren't for—well, you know. Or you can guess."
"She thought father would approve of a marriage between you if she became an heiress."
"Partly that, and partly she seemed to believe that I'd have spoken to her of love if she hadn't been a kind of dependent on my father. I tried to make her understand without putting it into brutal words, that I did love her of course, but only as a cousin. It's the devil having to tell a woman you don't want her! I'm not sure she did entirely understand, for she wrote me a letter afterward—it followed me to Dresden, and came the day after Marie had promised to be my wife. I didn't answer. I thought when Idina heard of my marriage she'd see why I hadn't replied, and why it was kinder not to write. I knew she would hear through father, for she corresponds with him. He is very punctilious about answering letters; and suspecting nothing he would tell the news. When I found her with Marie yesterday—but I see now I was a fool. These melodramatic things don't happen. And after all, Idina's a cold woman."