"You and Miss Thatcher," Huntington completed. "You see how the search narrows itself. I shall continue my investigations until I discover the truth.
"How perfectly ridiculous!" Edith cried, not yet convinced as to his sincerity. "Why, Merry is a mere child, and—what makes you think there is anything of that kind in Mr. Cosden's mind?"
"His vindictiveness. Haven't you noticed the way he treated Billy? And he has actually been harsh with me on two occasions. It isn't like Connie; and if it affects him like this now, Heaven alone knows what the outcome will be if matters go further. You know the old song:
"You may carve it on his tombstone, you may cut it on his card,
That a young man married is a young man marred."
"There you go again," laughed Edith; "the cynic once more leaps into the limelight."
"But won't you pledge yourself to assist me in my noble work? Why not form ourselves into a society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Single Persons, and be sworn to do all we can to intervene between matrimony and its victims?"
"Of course each would be at liberty to use his own judgment?" queried Edith, amused.
"Yes; so long as he did not confound judgment with sentiment."
"That is a capital suggestion," she agreed smiling. "I will gladly join you. Our first undertaking, I presume, will be to prevent affairs from going any further between Merry and Mr. Cosden—granting that they exist?"
"I don't say that. I recognize in you a superior person, and as such I have absolute confidence that you will act in accord with the unwritten constitution of our Society."