"A divorced woman? Gordon?" Then she laughed. "The way you said 'divorced woman' had a formidable sound." The personal application was evidently a surprise to her; evidently, too, it interested her, and she wrestled with it sitting erect and bright-eyed. In another moment she had worked out the answer to her own satisfaction. "It would depend upon her--what she was like. If she were innocent--if she had been grossly wronged, and had sought the relief from her distress which the laws allow, and I liked her and he loved her, I shouldn't object. Or, put it in this way: I should prefer that Gordon did not marry a widow, but a girl with all the freshness of her life before her." "Yes, indeed," murmured Constance. "But plenty of young men fall in love with widows and marry, and no one thinks any the worse of the widows, or of them. I'd fully as lief Gordon married a divorced woman as one who had buried her husband. And if I were sure she was a fine woman, I can imagine my sentiment vanishing like moonshine, and my not minding a bit." Constance shook her head thoughtfully. "He must marry some fine, sweet girl without a past," she said with gentle positiveness. "Amen to that, my dear. And the sooner the better." One day early in September, in the summer following the date of this conversation, Paul Howard entered the office. As he passed into Gordon's private room, omitting the gay greeting which he was wont to exchange with her, Constance noticed that his expression was grave and tense, and that he looked tired. She said to herself that his summer at Newport could not have rested him.