"I suppose it is only natural you should," Fanny admitted, "though to me it seems that when a woman has a baby like that, she pays for all the fun that went before." She threw back her head a little and laughed. "Oh, I'm not moral, I know that, but Joan is, that's what I want you to understand. Anyway, Joan left the man, or he left her, which is more likely, and the baby was never born. Joan was run over in the street one day and was ill in hospital for a month. That was what Joan came up against," she went on, "when she fell in love with your brother. Tell him, I said, it won't make a pin's worth of difference to his love--and it wouldn't. But Joan did not believe me, she had learned to be afraid of good people, some of them had been real nasty to her, and she was afraid." "She need not have been," Mabel said. The girl was so earnest in the defence of her friend that one could not help liking her. "Dick knew about it all the time." Fanny nodded. "Yes, Joan told me that on the day after he had been here. It would have been fairer if he had said so from the beginning. You see," she leant forward, most intense in her explanation, "Joan thought, and thought and thought, till she was really silly with thinking. He had told her he was coming here on Monday to ask her to marry him, and she loved him. I should have held my tongue about things, or whispered them to him as I lay in his arms, holding on to him so that he could not push me away, but Joan isn't my sort. She just couldn't bear to tell him, I guess she was afraid to see his face alter and grow hard. Do you blame her because she was afraid? I don't really know the rest of the story," she finished, "because I was away, but I think Joan got hold of the silly notion that the best thing to do was to have another man hanging about here when Dr. Grant called. She thought it would make him angry, and that he would change his mind about wanting to marry her on the spot. And she pretty well succeeded. I had just got back and was standing in the hall, when Dr. Grant got back from her room and went out. He did not notice me, his face was set white and stern like people's faces are when they have just had to shoot a dog they loved. The other man meant nothing to her, nothing; why she hasn't even seen him for months, and she never liked him. Oh, can't you explain to your brother, he would listen to you." She put her hand on Mabel's knee in her earnestness and pulled herself a little nearer. "It's breaking both their hearts, and it's all such a silly mistake." "Are you not asking rather a lot from me?" Mabel said quietly; she met the other's eyes frankly. "Putting aside all ideas, moral or immoral, don't you understand that it is only natural that I should want my brother to marry some girl who had not been through all that Miss Rutherford has?" The quick tears sprang to Fanny's eyes. "If he loves her," she claimed, "is not that all that matters?" "He may love again," Mabel reminded her.