“Isn’t it a pity Nancy Almar is so poisonous at times!  She isn’t really bad hearted, but anything connected with Christine has always roused her jealousy—­the old beauty and the new one, I suppose.”

“I wonder,” said Riatt, “what is the difference, if any, between a pirate and a bucaneer?  Miss Fenimer and Mrs. Almar seem to me to have many qualities in common.”

“Oh, Max, how can you say that?  Christine is so much more gentle and womanly, so much—­”

“My dear Laura, we haven’t very much time, and I think you said you wanted to talk to me on a business matter.”

Laura Ussher had the grace to hesitate, just an instant, before she answered:  “Oh, yes, but it’s your business I want to talk about.  I want to speak to you about this terrible situation in which Christine finds herself.  Do you realize that Nancy and Wickham between them will spread this story everywhere, with all the embellishments their fancy may dictate, particularly emphasizing the fact that it was Christine who made the horse run away.  It will be in the papers within a week.  You know, Max, just as well as I do, that it wasn’t her fault.  Is she to be so cruelly punished for it?  Can you permit that?”

“It’s not my fault either, Laura.”

“You can so easily save the situation.”

“How?”

“By asking her to marry you.”

“That I will not do.”

“Are you involved with some one else?”

“I might make you understand better if I said yes, but it would not be true.  I’m not in love with any individual, but I know clearly the type of woman I could fall in love with, and it most emphatically is not Miss Fenimer’s.”

“Yet so many men have fallen in love with her.”

“Oh, I see her beauty; I even feel her charm; but to marry her, no.”

“Think of the prestige her beauty and position—­”

“My dear Laura, what position?  Social position as represented by the hectic triviality of the last few days?  Thank you, no, again.”

“Dear Max,” said his cousin more seriously than she had hitherto spoken, “you know I would not want you to do anything that I thought would make you unhappy.  But this wouldn’t.  I know Christine better than you do.  I know that under all her worldliness and hardness there is a vein of devotion and sweetness—­”

“Very likely there is.  But it would not be brought out by a mercenary marriage with a man who cared nothing for her.  If that is all you have to say, Laura, let’s end an interview which hasn’t been very pleasant for either of us.”

“Oh, Max, how can you abandon that lovely creature to some tragic future?”

“You know quite well she is going to do nothing more tragic than to marry Hickson.”

“And you are willing to sacrifice her to Hickson?”

“My dear Laura, I cannot prevent all the beautiful, dissatisfied women in the world from marrying dull, kind-hearted young men who adore them.”