It was a humiliating revelation, and though perhaps Emma had less pride than most women, she felt it sorely. She was deeply attached to this man; her heart had gone out to him when she first saw him, after the unaccountable fashion that hearts sometimes affect. Still, having learned the truth, she was quite in earnest when she told her father that, were she alone concerned, she would meet him no more. But she was not alone in the matter, and it was this knowledge that made her pause. To begin with, there was Henry himself to be considered, for it seemed that if he did not marry her he would be ruined or something very like it; and, regarding him as she did, it became a question whether she ought not to outrage her pride in order to save him if he would be saved. Also she knew that her father wished for this marriage above all things—that it was, indeed, one of the chief objects of his life; though it was true that in an inexplicable fit of irritation with everything and everybody, he had but now offered to bring the affair to nothing. Why he should be so set upon it she could not understand, any more than she could understand why he should have been so vexed when she illustrated her sense of the hardship of Joan’s position by supposing herself to be similarly placed. These were some of the mysteries by which their life was surrounded, mysteries that seemed to thicken daily. After what she had seen and heard this afternoon she began to believe that Joan Haste herself was another of them. Joan had told her that her father had always been kind to her. Taken by itself there was nothing strange about this, for Emma knew him to be charitable to many people, but it was strange that he should have practically denied all knowledge of the girl some few weeks before. Perhaps he knew more about her than he chose to say—even who she was and where she came from. Now it appeared that her presentiment was coming true, and that Joan herself was playing some obscure and undefined part in the romance or intrigue in which she, Emma, was the principal though innocent actor. In effect, Joan had given her to understand that she was in love with Henry, and yet she had implored her to marry Henry. Why, if Joan was in love with him, should she desire another woman to marry him? It was positively bewildering, also it was painful, and, like everything else connected with this business, humbling to her pride. She felt herself being involved in a network of passions, motives and interests of which she could only guess the causes, and the issues whereof were dark; and she longed, ah, how she longed to escape from it back into the freedom of clear purpose and honest love! But would she ever escape? Could she ever hope to be the cherished wife of the man whom too soon she had learned to love? Alas! she doubted it. And yet, whatever was the reason, she could not make up her mind to have done with him, either for his sake or her own. CHAPTER XXI. A LUNCHEON PARTY.