The Mortons' opinion was just as definite: "I hope Maurice will marry again; Edith's just the girl for him—What!" Mrs. Morton interrupted herself, at a whisper of gossip, "he had a mistress? I don't believe a word of it!"
"But I'm afraid it's true," her husband told her, soberly; "there's a boy." His wife's shocked face made him add: "I think Curtis will feel he ought to legitimatize the youngster by marrying his mother. Maurice is good stuff. He won't sidestep an obligation."
"I never heard of such an awful idea!" said Mrs. Morton, dismayed. "I hope he'll do nothing of the kind! You can't correct one mistake by making another. Don't you agree with me?" she demanded of Doctor Nelson; who displayed, of course, entire ignorance of Mr. Curtis's affairs.
He only said, "Well, it's a rum world."
Johnny Bennett, in Buenos Aires, reading a letter from his father, said: "Poor Eleanor!" ... Then he grew a little pale under his tan, and added something which showed his opinion—not, perhaps, of what Maurice ought to do, but of what he would do! "I might as well make it a three-years' contract," Johnny said, bleakly, "instead of one. Of course there 11 be no use going back home. Eleanor's death settles my hash."
Even Mrs. O'Brien, informed by kitchen leakage as to what had happened, had something to say: "He ought to make an honest woman of the little fellow's mother. But to think of him treating Miss Eleanor that way!"
And now, in the studio, the Houghtons also were saying what Maurice ought—and ought not!—to do: "I'm afraid he's thinking of marrying her," Mr. Houghton had said; and his wife had said, quickly, "I hope so—for the sake of his child!"
"But, Mary," he protested, "look at it from the woman's point of view; this 'Lily' would be wretched if she had to live Maurice's kind of life!"
Edith, standing with her back to her father and mother, staring down into the ashes of the empty fireplace, said, over her shoulder, "Maurice may marry somebody who will help him with Jacky—just as Eleanor would have done, if she had lived."
"My dear," her father said, quickly, "he has had enough of your sex to last his lifetime! As a mere matter of taste, I think Maurice won't marry anybody."