smoothly that none save an accurate observer would have suspected
the fierce whirlpool which lay just below the surface. Because, he
thought, they would like it better, Richard left the two ladies
alone at last and then turning suddenly upon Edith, Grace said,

"Tell me, Edith, is your heart in this or have you done it in a
fit of desperation?"

"I have had a long time to think of it," Edith answered proudly.
"It is no sudden act. Richard is too noble to accept it if it
were. I have always loved him,--not exactly as I loved Arthur, it
is true."

Here the whirlpool underneath threatened to betray itself, but
with a mighty effort Edith kept it down, and the current was
unruffled as she continued,

"Arthur is nearer my age--nearer my beau ideal, but I can't have
him, and I'm not going to play the part of a love-lorn damsel for
a married man. Tell him so when you write. Tell him I'm engaged to
Richard just as he said I would be. Tell him I'm happy, too, for I
know I'm doing right. It is not wicked to love Richard and it was
wicked to love him."

It cost Edith more to say this than she supposed, and when she
finished, the perspiration stood in drops beneath her hair and
about her mouth.

"You are deceiving yourself," said Grace, who, without any selfish
motive now, really pitied the hard, white-faced girl, so unlike