"Of course!" said Mrs. Rossiter rather impatiently. "Ned's all right as a brother-in-law, useful to have about, to run errands, etc. One has to have a man in the house, and she's really rather fond of him. But to marry him off to a fresh young girl like you!—No, no, Jane's not that sort."
"Oh," said Joan faintly. She began to realize that instead of antagonism, it had been friendliness that watched her, motherly, anxious kindness, which she had been too blind to understand.
"Oh, Mrs. Rossiter," she cried tremulously, "I've been horrid!"
"Bless you, no. It's Ned who was horrid, I suspect—men are. Votes for Women, eh? Be glad you've found it out in time.... But you fooled me, you know; and to do Ned justice, I think you fooled him. He's not altogether a cad. I've never known him try cradle-snatching before. He usually prefers to play the game with people who understand, married women or widdy-ladies of mature years, or—well, the professional charmer."
"Ugh! You speak as if there'd been dozens of us!"
"So there have. Dozens! And there are dozens of him, too. Amorists, you know, dilettantes, non-eligibles—the bane of all good chaperones. 'Gather the rosebuds while ye may' effect. They make quite a business of it, I assure you; or rather an art. 'The secret of enjoyment is to know the exact moment when one has attained the maximum—and to stop there'! Haven't you heard him say it?" She laughed rather mirthlessly, and Joan did not join her.
After a moment the older woman left the arm of the chair where she had been perched boyishly, with swinging leg, nibbling her marron. She walked about the room, and then came and sat beside Joan on the bed. Her voice had become rather shy.
"Joan," she asked, "did you—care, my dear?"
The girl turned her burning face away. "I don't know," she whispered. "How does one know?—I thought about him all the time, and sometimes I didn't want him at all, and sometimes—I did.—And now I wish my father would kill him!"
The other shook her head. "That's not it, then. You'd know! Even at the worst," she said quietly, "if my father had killed him, I should have wanted—to kill my father."