"It was while we were at school together," Edith explained. "Marian was irresistible then—as now, and every man she met lost his head altogether; but for a time she and Mr. Hamlen were engaged. Then she married the last man we expected; but she and Harry have been very happy. It simply shows that you never can tell."
"No; but I heard enough about him. If he had been merely intelligent instead of intellectual he might have had her just as well as not. He simply frightened her out of it."
"Where did Monty come in?"
"I never heard of him; things couldn't have gone very far."
"You remember what he said just before we started out this morning? I know him pretty well and Monty doesn't speak like that unless there is something back of it."
"Well," Edith laughed, "I'm sure I should have known, even so. Why, I could reel off so many names that you would think Marian was a heartless coquette; but it wasn't that at all. She simply loved attention, as all women do."
"How about the daughter?" queried Cosden.
"Merry?" Miss Stevens interrogated. "Oh, Merry is an up-to-date, twentieth-century thoroughbred. Marian has never known just what to make of her because she isn't like other girls, but to my mind the comparison is all to her credit. I'm generous when I give the child so good a character, for I know she heartily disapproves of me."
Cosden was pleased with the intuition he had shown in his selection. "I should think young Huntington would bore her about as much as a youngster in kilts," he said, to draw her out.