For a few minutes there was silence in the room. Then Nina said bravely, through tears:
"I don't know why you should be sorry for what will save me months of slow worry, all at one blow! You and Harriet needn't worry any more. I'm cured. I've been a fool, I let him flatter me and lie to me," said this new Nina, with bitter courage, "but I'm over it now. I'm sorry I gave you so much trouble, Father----"
"My darling girl," her father said, tenderly. "I only wish I could spare you all this!"
"Better now than two or three years after we were married," Nina said. "Plenty of girls find it out then! Father, I want you to get that check, through the clearing-house, for me," she said, heroically, "and I want to keep it. If ever I'm a fool about a man again, I'll take it out and look at it!"
"I have it, I told Fox to get it to-day," Richard said. "You shall have it!"
Nina had turned suddenly white; it was as if a last little hope had been killed.
"You have it!" she whispered. "He cashed it, then!"
"He cashed it the next morning," Richard said. Nina was silent for a moment.
"How you must laugh at me, Harriet!" she said then.
"I? Laugh at you!" Harriet said, stricken. "My darling girl, I am the last woman in the world who could do that! I was only your age, Nina, when I met him--you know that story. Why, Nina, you're but eighteen, after all, you'll have many and many an affair before the right man comes along," Harriet said. "You'll look back on this some day, and say, 'It was an experience, and I learned from it! It is only going to make me happier and more sure when the man whom I really love comes to me!' Aren't you much richer now, in actual knowledge of men, than Amy and Francesca, who haven't had anything but school flirtations?"