Ada seemed about to rise, but turned it off in an arrangement of her dress.

“When Mr. Asquith told you something from me a month ago,” Isabel continued, “did it occur to you that I had any motive in—in choosing just that time, in letting you know those things just when I did?”

Ada had fixed a keen and curious look on the speaker, a look which was troublesome in its intensity.

“I supposed,” was her measured reply, “that you thought I had come to the age when I ought to know something of the future that was before me.”

“Yes, that is true. You will credit me, will you not, with a desire to save you from being at a disadvantage?”

“Certainly.”

The word was rather ironically spoken.

“You perhaps think I ought to have told you sooner?”

“I have had that thought.”

“On the other hand, you do not forget that nothing obliged me to tell you for another year and a half.”