ttes and his coffee beside him on a little table, and then she
began murmuring:

"Isn't it a pity Nancy Almar is so poisonous at times! She isn't really
bad hearted, but anything connected with Christine has always roused her
jealousy--the old beauty and the new one, I suppose."

"I wonder," said Riatt, "what is the difference, if any, between a pirate
and a bucaneer? Miss Fenimer and Mrs. Almar seem to me to have many
qualities in common."

"Oh, Max, how can you say that? Christine is so much more gentle and
womanly, so much--"

"My dear Laura, we haven't very much time, and I think you said you
wanted to talk to me on a business matter."

Laura Ussher had the grace to hesitate, just an instant, before she
answered: "Oh, yes, but it's your business I want to talk about. I want
to speak to you about this terrible situation in which Christine finds
herself. Do you realize that Nancy and Wickham between them will spread
this story everywhere, with all the embellishments their fancy may
dictate, particularly emphasizing the fact that it was Christine who made
the horse run away. It will be in the papers within a week. You know,
Max, just as well as I do, that it wasn't her fault. Is she to be so
cruelly punished for it? Can you permit that?"

"It's not my fault either, Laura."

"You can so easily save the situation."

"How?"

"By asking her to marry you."

"That I will not do."

"Are you involved with some one else?"

"I might make you understand better if I said yes, but it would not be
true. I'm not in love with any individual, but I know clearly the type of
woman I could fall in love with, and it most emphatically is not Miss
Fenimer's."

"Yet so many men have fallen in love with her."

"Oh, I see her beauty; I even feel her charm; but to marry her, no."

"Think of the prestige her beauty and position--"

"My dear Laura, what position? Social position as represented by the
hectic triviality of the last few days? Thank you, no, again."

"Dear Max," said his cousin more seriously than she had hitherto spoken,
"you know I would not want you to do anything that I thought would make
you unhappy. But this wouldn't. I know Christine better than you do. I
know that under all her worldliness and hardness there is a vein of
devotion and sweetness--"

"Very likely there is. But it would not be brought out by a mercenary
marriage with a man who cared nothing for her. If that is all you have to
say, Laura, le