"Everyone," she supplied, promptly. "Your wife, your mother, Mary Putnam! Even Mrs. Tabor."
"I suppose so!" he conceded, after a pause. And beneath his breath he added, "Isabelle--Ida Tabor!"
His tone was all she asked of exquisite reassurance.
"I hoped you wouldn't!" she said, standing up with clasped hands and a sudden brightening of her tired and colourless face. "That's what I tried to make myself believe you would feel! I wanted so to leave it all behind. I thought he had gone, that it was all over, that what it was mattered more than what it sounded like! I thought I could save Nina better, with what I knew, than any one else! But last night," Harriet added, "proved to me that I had been all wrong. I've been so worried," she added, with utter faith in his decision. "I don't know what you think we had better do."
For a full minute Richard watched her in silence. Then he said, mildly:
"About Nina, you mean?"
"About everything!" Harriet suddenly laughed gaily, like a child. Life seemed once more straight and pleasant in this exquisite June morning; she felt puzzled, but somehow no longer afraid. The menacing horrors of all the years, the vague uneasiness that she had never quite dared to face, were fluttering about her awakening spirit like Alice's pack of cards.
"Nina will come into line," her father said, thoughtfully, "she doesn't know what she wants. I wish--I wish he loved her!" he added, with a faint frown. "I'll see him about it again. We'll take her to Rio. She'll get over it."
"And--" Harriet stopped, and began again: "And do you want things to go on just as they are?" she asked.
For answer Richard smiled at her in silence.