"I like to keep step with those I walk with," she replied, with a smile. "She may catch up, and welcome."
"I never did you any kind of justice, Laura," said Belle.
"That was not your fault. How can one do justice to a butterfly, as long as it's an ugly chrysalis?"
"But, Laura, how could you have the heart to take both Eric and Viola away from Olaf?" asked Margaret.
"Poor Olaf, indeed?" cried Laura, "just as if men never survived the loss of their wives. I have no doubt that by the time the first year was out he trotted down into Italy and married that pretty little Italian girl who reminded him so of Viola, and who took such a fancy to him."
"But she was a Romanist," objected Belle.
"So was Viola; yet he converted her. On the whole, I think I sacrificed her in a proselyting spirit."
"Well, what put Eric into your head?" asked Cyril Heath.
"What puts anything into anybody's head?" she responded, saucily. "And when I had got him on my hands, I didn't know what to do with him, and his death was a mercy."