"I know what people say about me," she exclaimed. "I know they say I ought to have borne everything and have gone on smiling and pretending I was happy even when I had the proof that he was--was--that he no longer cared for me, or for my--my happiness. But I could not--I was not constituted so. And if I have refused to submit to it I had good reason."
"Mrs. Wentworth," said Keith, "will you please tell me what you are talking about?"
"You will hear about it soon enough," she said, with a bitter laugh. "All you have to do is to call on Mrs. Nailor or Mrs. Any-one-else for five minutes."
"If I hear what I understand you to believe, that Norman cares for some one else, I shall not believe it."
She laughed bitterly.
"Oh, you and Norman always swore by each other. I guess that you are no better than other men."
"We are, at least, better than some other men," said Keith, "and Norman is better than most other men."
She simply shrugged her shoulders and drifted into a reverie. It was evidently not a pleasant one.
Keith rose to go. And a half-hour later he quite casually called at old Mrs. Wentworth's, where he found the children having a romp. Miss Huntington looked as sweet as a rose, and Keith thought, or at least hoped, she was pleased to see him.
Keith promptly availed himself of Mrs. Wentworth's permission, and was soon calling every day or two at her house, and even on those days when he did not call he found himself sauntering up the avenue or in the Park, watching for the slim, straight, trim little figure he now knew so well. He was not in love with Lois. He said this to himself quite positively. He only admired her, and had a feeling of protection and warm friendship for a young and fatherless girl who had once had every promise of a life of ease and joy, and was by the hap of ill fortune thrown out on the cold world and into a relation of dependence. He had about given up any idea of falling in love. Love, such as he had once known it, was not for him. Love for love's sake--love that created a new world and peopled it with one woman--was over for him. At least, so he said.