"Is that your news?" said Gladys, languidly. Suddenly she flung aside the robes and sat up.
"What's Pauline going to do? Can she—" Gladys paused.
"Yes, she can—if she wishes to."
"But—will she? Will she?" demanded Gladys.
"Jack doesn't know what she'll do," replied Langdon. "He's keeping quiet—the only sane course when that kind of storm breaks. He had hoped you'd be there to smooth her down, but he says when he opened the subject of your going back to Saint X you cut him off."
"Does she know?"
"Somebody must have told her the day you left. Don't you remember, she was taken ill suddenly?"
"Oh!" Gladys vividly recalled Pauline's strange look and manner. She could see her sister-in-law—the long, lithe form, the small, graceful head, with its thick, soft, waving hair, the oval face, the skin as fine as the petals at the heart of a rose, the arched brows and golden-brown eyes; that look, that air, as of buoyant life locked in the spell of an icy trance, mysterious, fascinating, sometimes so melancholy.
"I almost hope she'll do it, Mowbray," she said. "Jack doesn't deserve her. He's not a bit her sort. She ought to have married—"
"Some one who had her sort of ideals—some one like that big, handsome chap—the one you admired so frantically—Governor Scarborough. He was chock full of ideals. And he's making the sort of career she could sympathize with."