"I must tell you what I think, mustn't I?" said the other guardian, gently. "And I think she has cared for him a long time."
"It is impossible for me to agree with you. Long time? Permit me to ask how long you mean? In the mean while she has been engaged to another man—Evert Winthrop. Do you forget that?"
"I don't think she realized fully—she was very young; she is extremely impulsive always," answered his colleague, wandering rather helplessly for a moment among her phrases. Then she spoke more decidedly. "But now she knows, now she is sure; she is sure it is Lucian she cares for."
"She is fanciful, and this is only another fancy. Sally, too, has been much to blame."
"I do not think Garda is fanciful," said Margaret. "And—it is not a childish feeling, her liking for Lucian Spenser."
The Doctor stopped on the other side of the room. Then he came back and stood gazing at Margaret in silence. "You are a woman, and you are good," he said at last. "She is very fond of you, she tells you everything, and you must know. If therefore you say that she—"
"Yes," answered Margaret, "I do know. I am sure she cares for him very, very much." Here some of Garda's extraordinarily frank expressions about Lucian, and the delight it gave her to even look at him, coming suddenly into her memory, over all her fair face there rose a sweet deep blush.
The Doctor turned away and dropped into a chair.
"There is nothing against Mr. Spenser, I believe," Margaret began again, after a short pause.
"It isn't that. No, I believe there is nothing." He sat there, his figure looking unusually small, his eyes turned away.