She had wrapped herself in a warm robe, over her thin nightgown, and thrust her feet into fur-lined slippers, and after Nina was fathoms deep in youthful slumber Harriet crept out to the balcony, and sat thinking, thinking, thinking.  She reviewed the incredible events of the past few days, and the actors drifted before her vision fitfully:  Isabelle, white-bosomed and beautiful, in her prime; Tony Pope, passionate and wretched; Royal, low-voiced, dreamy, poetic, with his eloquent black eyes; Nina, newly awakened; Ward, weak, boyish, ardent; Madame Carter full of theatrical dignity and well-rounded phrases, and lastly—­simple, strong, anxious to protect them all, even from their own follies—­ Richard.

“Not one word of blame, not one ugly insinuation,” she mused, “yet she has shamed him, and he is so honourable; and she has made him conspicuous, when he is so modest!”

She thought of Isabelle, fresh from Germaine’s careful hands, lying in her exquisite white against the cushions of a deck chair, smiling, in the rosy flattering light under the green awning, at the infatuated man beside her.  Isabelle was a splendid sailor, and loved the sea.  They would land at some dreamlike Italian city, rising in tiers of pink and cream and blue beside the sapphire Mediterranean, and Isabelle would unfurl her white parasol, and walk beside him through the warmth and beauty—­

“Ugh!” said Harriet, with a healthy uprush of utter disgust.  These few months would not be cloudless for Isabelle, by any means.  And after them, what?  Was it conceivable that those fatal sixteen years would fail to identify Tony and Isabelle wherever they went, even if the press was not eagerly assisting them?  Supposing that Isabelle never thought of Crownlands, of her handsome son and her young daughter, of the man whose patience and cleverness had lifted her to all this luxury from an apartment in a small town, would no memory of the place she had held, and the friendships she had commanded, haunt her?  Truly there was always society for the Isabelles, but to Harriet’s clean sense it seemed but the society of a jail.

“I wouldn’t change places with her!” Harriet decided, in the soft silence and darkness of the summer night.

From Isabelle’s problem her thoughts went to her own, to Royal Blondin.  She was wakeful and restless to-night simply because she could not decide just how much she need fear him.  Firstly, was there any reason for antagonizing him, and secondly, would he hurt her if she did?  For Royal could not punish her without punishing himself, and could not banish her from Crownlands if he ever hoped to show his own face there again.

Nina, reaching her room that night, had flung her arms about Harriet’s neck.

“Oh, I’m so happy!  Oh, Miss Harriet, were you ever in love?” she had demanded, with a girl’s wild, exultant laugh.

This was moving very fast indeed.  Harriet had managed a sympathetic yet warning smile.