"Poor Conant!" said Gay again. "As Chris would say, he'll be all top-boots and no grin!"
"Oh, he is young—he will get over it," said Lossie. "I never pretended to care for him, and as to suffering, haven't I gone through enough?"
"And pray," said Gay, who felt a great desire to turn head over heels a great many times in rapid succession, just as she had done when she was a child, "when is Carlton going to tell me that he has—has"—she pretended to weep—"jilted me?"
For a moment Lossie turned away; already she was a better woman as she said:
"Gay, he knew that you loved Chris too much for there to be the smallest scrap of love in your heart left over for him. He said that life without love was like the sky without sun—that he had been a selfish brute to think he could make you happier than Chris could."
"He's quite right," said Gay, who had recovered all her good looks in a moment, and with them the old charm and gaieté de cÅ“ur that had so distinguished her, "and if you'll get Mr. Rensslaer to show you his sculpture and medals presently, and leave Carlton and me together, I'll just tell him that he's a dear—and that I love him."
Gay never told Chris, nor Carlton Lossie, what was said during that brief interview in the Elsinore drawing-room; but Gay, to her shame, realised then, how consistently Carlton had played the game of love, how if he had been greedy once, he had sacrificed himself twice over for her, and tears fell from her eyes that night, before she dropped into the first dreamless slumber she had known for months.
The Professor was delighted that her home with him was to remain her home still, and everyone was happy except George Conant and Chris. The latter knew nothing of the change of partners, and went slogging away at his failures and successes, seemingly quite unable to break his neck, though he took every opportunity of trying to do so. Even when he did hear the news, he made no comment, lowered his proud shield of reserve to no man or woman either. It was no affair of his, when Gay had "chucked" him; she had done it for once and all, and he did not go near her.
There was not an ounce of vice in Chris, but she had sent him further on the road to the devil than anyone but himself, and perhaps Mrs. Summers knew, and the devoted old woman waxed more bitter against Gay day by day. It did not require the removal of certain photographs from his rooms, to indicate who was responsible for the change in him.
"As if, knowing how he misses his mother, she oughtn't to stand by him through everything," said Mrs. Summers indignantly to herself, and tried hard to make it up to her dear Mr. Chris in extra attention. But it did not seem to do him much good; he was beginning to think that there was a curse upon him, and that is a fatal thing for a man, making him sometimes reckless, sometimes bad, but seldom mentally, morally, or physically better.