"Bless you, no. It's Ned who was horrid, I suspect--men are. Votes for Women, eh? Be glad you've found it out in time.... But you fooled me, you know; and to do Ned justice, I think you fooled him. He's not altogether a cad. I've never known him try cradle-snatching before. He usually prefers to play the game with people who understand, married women or widdy-ladies of mature years, or--well, the professional charmer." "Ugh! You speak as if there'd been dozens of us!" "So there have. Dozens! And there are dozens of him, too. Amorists, you know, dilettantes, non-eligibles--the bane of all good chaperones. 'Gather the rosebuds while ye may' effect. They make quite a business of it, I assure you; or rather an art. 'The secret of enjoyment is to know the exact moment when one has attained the maximum--and to stop there'! Haven't you heard him say it?" She laughed rather mirthlessly, and Joan did not join her. After a moment the older woman left the arm of the chair where she had been perched boyishly, with swinging leg, nibbling her _marron_. She walked about the room, and then came and sat beside Joan on the bed. Her voice had become rather shy. "Joan," she asked, "did you--care, my dear?" The girl turned her burning face away. "I don't know," she whispered. "How does one know?--I thought about him all the time, and sometimes I didn't want him at all, and sometimes--I did.--And now I wish my father would _kill_ him!" The other shook her head. "That's not it, then. You'd know! Even at the worst," she said quietly, "if my father had killed him, I should have wanted--to kill my father." Joan forgot herself in sheer astonishment. "You!" she cried. "But I thought it was you who declined to marry him, even after you'd got a divorce to do it?" Mrs. Rossiter smiled queerly. "Did Ned tell you that?" Joan, much embarrassed, explained the Convent impression of Mr. Desmond and his broken heart. The other laughed. "So that's the idea he has allowed to get abroad? Nice of him. Ned always was a gentleman--and I suppose it does put him in a better light, too--But unfortunately the facts of the case are otherwise. I did get a divorce to marry him--not that he suggested it, oh, dear, no! That would have been too crude. It simply seemed to me the honest thing to do, and my husband agreed with me--So I took up my residence in Dakota. And when I came back, quite free and marriageable, Eduard happened to be in Brittany, painting." "And then?--" prompted Joan, round-eyed at this little glimpse behind the scenes. "That's all. There wasn't any 'then.' Eduard remained in Brittany, painting. The episode was over, you see. Presently I married Rossiter. One couldn't pine away like a love-lorn housemaid!" "Don't laugh," said Joan hoarsely. "It's too awful!" Her hand gripped the other's. "Oh, how can you bear to _speak_ to him?"