y, about it, he said: 'That's all right, dear. I've explained.
Helen perfectly understands.'

That it was all right seemed demonstrated by the little note, kind and
sympathetic, that Helen wrote to her, saying that she did understand,
perfectly, and was so glad for her and for Franklin, and that it was
such a good thing when people found out mistakes in time. There was not
a trace of grievance; Helen seemed to relinquish a good which, she
recognised, had only been hers because Althea hadn't wanted it. And this
was natural; how could one show one's grievance in such a case? Helen,
above all, would never show it; and Althea was at once oppressed, and at
the same time oddly sustained by the thought that she had, all
inevitably, done her friend an injury. She lay awake at night, turning
over in her mind Helen's present plight and framing loving plans for the
future. She took refuge in such plans from a sense of having come to an
end of things. To think of Helen, and of what, with their wealth, she
and Franklin could do for Helen, seemed, really, her strongest hold on
life. It was the brightest thing that she had to look forward to, and
she looked forward to it with complete self-effacement. She saw the
beautiful Italian villa where Helen should be the fitting centre, the
English house where Helen, rather than she, should entertain. She felt
that she asked nothing more for herself. She was safe, if one liked to
put it so, and in that safety she felt not only her ambitions, but even
any personal desires, extinguished. Her desire, now, was to unite with
Franklin in making the proper background for Helen. But at the moment
these projects were unrealisable; taste, as well as circumstance,
required a pause, a lull. It was a relief--so many things were a relief,
so few things more than merely that--to know that Helen was in the
country somewhere, and would not be back for ten days or a fortnight.

Meanwhile, Miss Harriet Robinson, very grave but very staunch, sustained
Althea through all the outward difficulties of her _volte-face_. Miss
Robinson, of course, had had to be told of the reason for the
_volte-face_, the fact that Althea had found, after all, that she cared
more for Franklin Winslow Kane. It was in regard to the breaking of her
engagement that Miss Robinson was staunch and grave; in regard to the
new engagement, Althea saw that, though still staunch, she was much
disturbed. Miss Robinson found Franklin hard to place, a