"And for a woman like you to see that you are morbid is to cease to be morbid."
"I am sure I don't want to be; but indeed it is so difficult to see what is simple and right. I have often smiled to think how I told you in summer, that the 'great, puzzling subject of compromise' had never come into my life."
"You said on the same occasion, if I remember rightly, that my life was infinitely franker and more straightforward than yours. I presume you don't say so still?"
"I do, with all my heart."
"H'm. Do you think it likely that I would go routing up poor relations for the pleasure of devoting myself exclusively to their society?"
Mona's face flushed. "Mr Dickinson," she said, "I ought to tell you that I arranged to come to my cousin before I met the Munros. I don't say that I should not have done it in any case, but I made the arrangement at a time when, with many friends, I was practically alone in the world. And also,"—she thought of Colonel Lawrence's story,—"even apart from the Munros, if I had known all that I know now, about circumstances in the past, I am not sure that I should have come at all. That is all my heroics are worth."
"You are a magnificently honest woman."
"I am not quite sure that I am not the greatest humbug that ever lived. Two minutes more. Do you bear in mind that Lady Kirkhope said she would call on me?"
"I will see to that. Am I forgiven for introducing you to her?"
Mona smiled. "I shall take my revenge by introducing you to a much greater woman, my friend Doris Colquhoun."