“Oh, the more I think about it, the less I pity him in that matter. He knew perfectly well that he was doing wrong. Men ought to do right, even if it doesn’t please women.”
The gentleman bowed his bald head in a fit of laughter. “I have no doubt those were Eve’s very words to Adam,” he chuckled; but the lady, without laughing, continued—
“And when the worst had come to the worst with Easton, it seems she didn’t spare herself. She told him everything.”
“Perhaps she might have spared him somewhat if she had not been quite so frank.”
“It was her duty to tell him!” rejoined the lady, sternly, “and I honor her for doing it. She never could have gone on and married him, with all that in her heart.”
“At any rate she didn’t go on and marry him. And I shall always contend that she was a hardly used woman; engaging herself to a man she merely pitied, under the mistaken impression that she was in love with him, and then—when she found that she didn’t want his friend either—dismissing the poor fellow with a final misgiving that perhaps she did like him, after all. I say it’s a case of unmerited suffering, if ever there was one.”
“Oh, it’s all very well to talk! But how do you reconcile such contradictions?”
“I don’t. But I’m certain of one thing: she wasn’t trying any of her little dramatic effects on you when she called yesterday and made you her confidante.” The gentleman here laughed so loud that the sound of his own voice alarmed him. He looked round, and saw that the seats about them were rapidly filling up, and he fell to studying his play-bill with conscious zeal.
By and by he turned again to his wife, and whispered, “I don’t think William’s peace of mind was permanently affected by his romance with your friend; he appeared to be in good spirits the other day when I saw him in New York, and was taking a good deal of interest in the fine arts, I fancied, from his behavior to your little protégée.”
“William has been very polite and very good; I shall always feel grateful to him for his kindness to her. He must have found it difficult at first; she’s very odd and doesn’t invite attention, though of course she’s glad of it, at heart. Yes, it was very, very considerate, and I shall take it as the greatest favor that William could have done me.”