t's easy for Glenn
to love people because it's easier for people to love Glenn. And
he's done me this much good: I won't be so ready to believe it's
easy for folks to love _me_, Uncle Chadwick. I guess I'm the sort
they mostly--_don't_. I'll not forget." She spoke without
bitterness, even with dignity. "One thing more, please. If ever
Peter Champneys finds out he loves somebody, and he'll let me know,
I'll give him his freedom. Fortune or no fortune, I won't hold him.
I know now--a little--what loving somebody means," she finished.

Her voice was so steady, her eyes so clear and direct, her manner so
contained, that he was uncomfortably impressed. He felt put upon the
defensive. As a matter of fact, in his first anger and surprise at
what he still considered her shameless behavior, he had seriously
considered the advisability of having Peter's marriage annulled. As
soon as he had become calmer, his pride and obstinacy rejected such
a course. After all, no harm had been done. She was very young. And
he hoped Glenn's outspoken condemnation had taught her a needed and
salutary lesson. Looking at her this morning, he realized that she
had been punished. But that she should so calmly speak of divorcing
Peter, of making way for some other woman, horrified him.

"You are talking immoral nonsense!" he said, angrily. "Let him go,
indeed! Divorce your husband! What are we coming to? In my day
marriage was binding. No respectable husband or wife ever dreamed of
divorce!"

"But they were real husbands and wives, weren't they?" asked Nancy.

"All husbands and wives are real husbands and wives!" he thundered.

She considered this--and him--carefully. "Then you don't want Mr.
Peter Champneys and me ever to be divorced? I thought maybe you
might."

"I forbid you even to _think_ such wickedness," cried he, alarmed.
"A girl of your age talking in such a manner! It's scandalous,
that's what it is,--scandalous! Shows the dry-rot of our national
moral sense, when the very children"--he glared at Nancy--"gabble
about divorce!"

"Then I--I mean, things are just to go along, the same as they have
been?" She looked at him pleadingly.

For a few minutes he drummed on the library table with his thin
brown fingers. His bushy brows contracted. He asked unexpectedly:

"Would you like to go away for a while? To travel?"

"Where?"

"Where? Why, anywhere! There's a whole world to travel in, isn't
there? Well, take Mrs. MacGregor and trav