Warren nodded. "I engineered that deal. It's a good location for such an enterprise. She sold for twelve thousand. I think I could have got her two or three thousand more, if she had been willing to wait, but she wasn't."
Forbes tried to appear relieved. "Twelve thousand! Well, I am glad to know she is not in immediate need. At the same time, Ridgeley, I should like her address."
Warren eyed him with malevolence. "It looks to me as if she wasn't particularly anxious for you to have it."
Forbes reddened. "Nonsense! Don't be an ass, Warren. It's quite important that I should have a talk with Miss Kent."
"I suppose you want to be sure that she's sufficiently penitent for the deception she practised on you."
"Really, my dear fellow, I can hardly see that it is any of your business what I have to say to her."
"Simply that I'm a friend of the lady's. And the only reason that I'm not her husband is that she's refused me, by letter and word of mouth, just eleven times by actual count. A singularly consistent character, our Hephzibah."
Forbes sat biting his lips. "I'm very sorry, Warren. I needn't say I had no idea—"
"Of course you had no idea. You took her devotion as a matter of course. You let your Julia insult her without speaking a word in her defense. And it never occurred to you that another man might think her unselfishness and her courage and her beauty and her wit made her a woman in a million."