"Pshaw!" he retorted. "That's just like a woman. She never can argue without coming to personalities. Besides, there never was another girl like you, my dear--I couldn't afford to take any chances." "Away with your blarney, Ned! You know I'm right, though you won't admit it." "Of course I won't. Daunt's not a woman's man. He never was. He's been getting along pretty well with Barbara, no doubt. But this man she's going to marry she's known for a year. The bishop told me about him the day after they landed. He thought she was practically engaged to him then." "'Practically!'" she commented with gentle scorn. "Are girls who have been properly brought up ever 'practically' engaged, and not fully so? She may have expected to marry him, and yet if I ever saw a girl in love--and, oh, Ned, remember that I understand what that means!--she was in love with Daunt yesterday. We women see more than men and feel more. Patsy saw it too. She's feeling badly about it, poor child, I think." "Nonsense!" the ambassador sniffed. "There isn't a shred of evidence. Barbara's not a flirt in the first place, and, if she were, Daunt can take care of himself." "He came to your study, didn't he, after the ball? I thought I heard his voice in the hall." "Yes," he answered. "How did he look?" "Well," he said hesitatingly, "he was a bit off color, I thought. I told him to take a few days off and run up to Chuzenji." "Is he going?" "Yes. He's leaving early in the morning. But don't get it into your sympathetic little head that it has the slightest thing to do with Barbara. The idea's quite absurd. He's never thought of such a thing as falling in love with her!" "Don't you think a woman _knows_ about these things?" "When she's told. And Barbara has told you, hasn't she?" "That she is going to marry Mr. Ware. Yes." "Well, what more do you want?" She shook her head. "Only for her to be happy!" she said tremulously. "I've never known a girl who has grown so into my heart, Ned. I feel almost as though she were Patsy's sister. She has no mother of her own--no one to advise her. And yet--I--somehow I couldn't talk about it to her. I _tried_. She doesn't want to. It seemed almost as if she were afraid." "Afraid?" "Of doing something else. As if she were going into this marriage as a refuge. I don't know just why I felt that, but I did. She was so very pale, so very quiet and contained. It didn't seem quite natural. It made me think of Pamela Langham. You remember her? She was in love with a man who--well, whom she found she couldn't marry. He wasn't the right sort. I suppose she was afraid she would marry him anyway if she waited. So she married another man at once--a man who had been in love with her for years. We were just the same age and she told me all about it at the time. To-night when Barbara told me she had promised to marry this Mr. Ware--and soon, Ned!--I seemed to see poor little dead Pamela looking at me with her pale face and big, deep eyes."