“You’re so sure of everything. You took it for granted that I loved you. Why were you so sure?” “I was just as sure as you were that I cared for you. Confess.” She whispered it. “Yes, I knew it, but when you did not come I thought, perhaps—— You see, I’m not strong or clever. I can’t help you as Virginia could.” She stopped, the color washing from her face. “I had forgotten. You have no right to love me—nor I you,” she faltered. “Girl o’ mine, we have every right in the world. Love is never wrong unless it is a theft or a robbery. There is nothing between me and Virginia that is not artificial and conventional, no tie that ought not to be broken, none that should ever of right have existed. Love has the right of way before mere convention a hundredfold.” “Ah! If I were sure.” “But I was to be a teacher to you and a judge for you.” “And I was to be a conscience to you.” “But on this I am quite clear. I can be a conscience to myself. However, there is no hurry. Time’s a great solvent.” “And we can go on loving each other in the meantime.” He lifted her little pink fingers and kissed them. “Yes, we can do that all the time.” CHAPTER XXVI. BREAKS ONE AND MAKES ANOTHER ENGAGEMENT Miss Balfour’s glass made her irritably aware of cheeks unduly flushed and eyes unusually bright. Since she prided herself on being sufficient for the emergencies of life, she cast about in her mind to determine which of the interviews that lay before her was responsible for her excitement. It was, to be sure, an unusual experience for a young woman to be told that her fiance would be unable to marry her, owing to a subsequent engagement, but she looked forward to it with keen anticipation, and would not have missed it for the world. Since she pushed the thought of the other interview into the background of her mind and refused to contemplate it at all, she did not see how that could lend any impetus to her pulse. But though she was pleasantly excited as she swept into the reception-room, Ridgway was unable to detect the fact in her cool little nod and frank, careless handshake. Indeed, she looked so entirely mistress of herself, so much the perfectly gowned exquisite, that he began to dread anew the task he had set himself. It is not a pleasant thing under the most favorable circumstances to beg off from marrying a young woman one has engaged oneself to, and Ridgway did not find it easier because the young woman looked every inch a queen, and was so manifestly far from suspecting the object of his call. “I haven’t had a chance to congratulate you personally yet,” she said, after they had drifted to chairs. “I’ve been immensely proud of you.” “I got your note. It was good of you to write as soon as you heard.” She swept him with one of her smile-lit side glances. “Though, of course, in a way, I was felicitating myself when I congratulated you.” “You mean?”