y, that is. You can be in love
with people and scarcely know them at all. And it often happens that if
you knew them better you wouldn't be in love with them."

"And you know him well enough to be sure that he'll want to do
everything right."

"Oh yes; I'm quite sure of that. I'm only uncertain that--everything
right--would satisfy me."

Drusilla reflected. "I see what you mean. And, of course, you want to
do--everything right--yourself."

Olivia glanced up obliquely under her lashes.

"I see what _you_ mean, too."

"You mustn't see too much." Drusilla spoke hastily. She waited in some
anxiety to see just what significance Olivia had taken from her words;
but when the latter spoke it was to pass on to another point.

"You see, he didn't want to marry an American, in the first place."

"Well, no one forced him into that. That's one thing he did with his
eyes open, at any rate."

"His doing it was a sort of--concession."

Drusilla looked at her with big, indignant eyes.

"Concession to what, for pity's sake?"

"Concession to his own heart, I suppose." Olivia smiled, faintly. "You
see, all other things being equal, he would have preferred to marry one
of his own countrywomen."

"It's six of one and half a dozen of the other. If he'd married one of
his own countrywomen, the other things wouldn't have been equal. So
there you are."

"But the other things aren't equal now. Don't you see? They're changed."

"_You're_ not changed." Drusilla felt these words to be dangerous. It
was a relief to her that Olivia should contradict them promptly.

"Oh yes, I am. I'm changed--in value. With papa's troubles there's a
depreciation in everything we are."

Drusilla repeated these words to her father and mother at table when she
went home to luncheon. "If she feels like that now," she commented,
"what _will_ she say when she knows all?--if she ever has to know it."

"But she hasn't changed," Mrs. Temple argued.

"It doesn't make any difference in _her_."

Drusilla shook her head. "Yes, it does, mother dear. You don't know
anything about it."

"I know enough about it," Mrs. Temple declared, with some asperity, "to
see that she will be the same Olivia Guion after her father has gone to
prison as she was in the days of her happiness. If there's any change,
it will be to make her a better and nobler character. She's just the
type to be--to be perfected through suffering."

"Y-y-es," Drusilla admitted, her head incli