“Thank God!”
“Why, Brace!”
“I mean it. It would have gone hard with me if you hadn’t.”
To Truedale, Betty presented another aspect.
“You can trust women with your emotions about men,” she confided to Lynda, “but not men! I wouldn’t let Brace know for anything how my love for him hobbles me; and if your Con—by the way, he’s a great deal nicer than I expected—should guess my abject state, he’d go to Brace and—put him wise! That’s why men have got where they are to-day—standing together. And then Brace might begin at once to bully me. You see, Lynda, when a husband gets the upper hand it’s often because he’s reinforced by all the knowledge his male friends hand out to him.”
Truedale met Betty first at the dinner—the little family dinner Lynda gave for her. Morrell and his wife. Brace and Betty, himself and Lynda.
In a trailing blue gown Betty looked quite stately and she carried her blond head high. She sparkled away through dinner and proved her happy faculty of fitting in, perfectly. It was a very merry meal, and later, by the library fire, Conning found himself tête-à-tête with his future sister-in-law. She amused him hugely.
“I declare,” he said teasingly, “I can hardly believe that you believe in the equality of the sexes.” They were attacking that problem at the moment.
“I—don’t!” Betty looked quaintly demure. “I believe in the superiority of men!”
“Good Lord!”