The girl thought it over with a maddening and feverish persistence that presently caused her a sensation of actual sickness.  How serious her countenancing of Nina’s love-affair might prove to be--how unimportant it might prove to be—­what Nina might do or might not do, these vague speculations churned and seethed in the weary brain that could find no beginning and no end to them.  To have made a clean breast of the whole matter months ago would have meant a delicious sense of freedom from responsibility now, but then under those circumstances would she, Harriet, have been here now?  Certainly, even in the present purely technical sense, she would not have been the second Mrs. Richard Carter, nor would she have held her present position of trust and responsibility.

While Nina and her lover murmured on the terrace Harriet brooded on these things, and after dinner that evening she gave Richard so sharp a warning that he sent at once for Nina, and with a clouded brow and angry eyes briefly requested Harriet to be present while he spoke to her.

Nina came at once, with an innocent expression on her rather heavy young face.  She seated herself near Harriet, and her father went to the point at once.

“Nina,” he said, seriously, “you saw Royal Blondin this afternoon, didn’t you?” And as Nina answered only with an ugly glance at Harriet, the betrayer, he added, “Didn’t I ask you not to see him any more, several months ago?”

“Yes, you did,” Nina said, in a low tone, and with a heaving breast.  She was sure of herself, but she felt a little frightened.

“I hope, and we all hope, that you will marry some day,” Richard said.  “But you are too young now to make a wise choice.  And until you are a little older, you will have to take my word for it that such an affair would only lead you to misery and regret.”

Nina mumbled something bravely.

“I didn’t hear you,” her father said.

“I said, I didn’t see what you could do about it!” the girl repeated, desperately.

For a few moments of silence Richard merely looked gravely at his daughter.  Then he clasped his fine hands on the desk before him, and cleared his throat.

“I cannot do as much as I should like, Nina,” he conceded, “but I shall do what I can.  But first let me ask you:  have you promised to marry Mr. Blondin?”

Silence.  Nina looked at the floor.  Richard repeated his question.

“Yes, I have-and you can’t kill me for it!” Nina said, and burst into tears.

“Well,” the father resumed, when Harriet had supplied a consolatory murmur and a handkerchief, “I’m sorry, of course.  Mrs. Tabor carried letters between you, did she?  You met him occasionally?”

“Two or three times,” Nina said, sniffing and drying her eyes busily.