“Women are queer,” he said again to himself, as he saw Edith on Richard’s knee, with her arm around his neck.  “Their love is like a footprint on the seashore; the first big wave washes it away, and they are ready to make another.  I reckon I shan’t bother myself about her any more.  If she loved Arthur as I thought she did, she couldn’t hug another one so soon.  It isn’t nature—­man nature, any way; but Edith’s like a reed that bends.  That character of Cooper’s suits her exactly.  I’ll call her so to myself hereafter—­Reed that bends,” and Victor hurried off, delighted with his new name.

But if Victor was in a measure deceived by Edith’s demeanor, Grace Atherton was not.  Women distrust women sooner than men; can read each other better, detect the hidden motive sooner, and ere the two had been five minutes together, Grace had caught a glimpse of the troubled, angry current over which the upper waters rippled so 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 the Edith of other days.  “You are taking Richard from gratitude, nothing else.  Victor told me of your parentage, but because he saved your life, you need not render yours as a return.  Your heart is not in this marriage.”

“Yes, it is—­all the heart I have,” Edith answered curtly.  Then, as some emotion stronger than the others swept over her, she laid her head upon the sofa arm and sobbed, “You are all leagued against me, but I don’t care.  I shall do as I like, I have promised to marry Richard, and Edith Hastings never lied.  She will keep her word,” and in the eyes which she now lifted up, Grace saw the years glittering like diamonds.