"Well?" Corinna waited patiently. She was not in the least afraid of what Stephen might do. She knew that she could trust him to be a gentleman; but being a gentleman, she reflected, did not necessarily keep one from breaking a woman's heart. And Patty had a wild, free heart that might be broken.
"I don't know what to do about it," Vetch was saying while she pondered the problem. "As I told you a minute ago this is all outside my job."
"Have you spoken to Patty?"
"I started to, but she made fun of the idea—you know the way she has. She asked me if I had ever heard of any one falling in love with a plaster saint?"
Corinna smiled. "So she called Stephen a plaster saint?"
"She was chaffing, of course."
"Well, I don't see that there is anything you can do unless you send Patty away."
"She wouldn't go," he responded simply; then after a moment of embarrassed hesitation, he blurted out nervously, "Is this young Culpeper what you would call a marrying man?"
This time it was impossible for Corinna to suppress her amusement, and it broke out in a laugh that was like the chiming of silver bells. Oh, if only Cousin Harriet could hear him! Then observing the gravity of Vetch's expression, she checked her untimely mirth with an effort.
"That depends, I suppose. At his age how can any one tell?" In her heart she did not believe that Stephen would marry Patty; she was not sure even that she, Corinna, should wish him to do so. There was too much at stake, and though her philosophy was fearless, her conduct had never been anything but conventional. While in theory she despised discretion, she realized that the virtue she despised, not the theory she admired, had dominated her life. The great trouble with acts of reckless nobility was that the recklessness was only for a moment, but the nobility was obliged to last a lifetime. It was not difficult, she knew, for persons like Stephen or herself to be heroic in appropriate circumstances; the difficulty began when one was compelled to sustain the heroic rôle long after the appropriate circumstances had passed away. Yet, in spite of the cynical lucidity of her judgment, the romantic in her heart longed to have Stephen, by one generous act of devotion, prove her theory fallacious. Her strongest impulse, the impulse to create happiness, to repair, as her father had once described it, crippled destinies; this impulse urged her now to help Patty's pathetic romance in every way in her power. It would be very fine if Stephen cared enough to forget what he was losing. It would be magnificent, she felt, but it would not be masculine. For she had had great experience; and though men might vary in a multitude of particulars, she had found that the solidarity of sex was preserved in some general code of emotional expediency.