“But when Fred’s brother, David, who was in dental college then, began to like me, then they began to make light of it,” Harriet remembered.  “There had been no marriage, of course, either in law or in fact.  They all knew that.  And I suppose if I had married David it might have been happier for me.  But as it was, I angered them.  I didn’t want to marry David.  And so it was what folly girls got themselves into—­what the world thought of a girl who had been ’talked about’—­what the least breath of scandal meant!”

“And you went back to Blondin?” Richard suggested.

“I?  No, I never saw him again until a year ago in this garden!” Harriet said.

“You never saw him again!” the man ejaculated.

“Not for nine years!”

“But—­my God, my dear girl, he spoke of you as his wife!” Richard said.

“He said I had been.  Not that I was now!”

The man looked at her, looked away at the river, and shrugged his shoulders as if he were mystified by the ways of women.

“But—­you were never his wife?” he said, flatly.

“Oh, no!  You didn’t think,” Harriet said, hurt, “that I would have married you, or any one else, if I had been!”

“You let him blackmail you for that,” Richard further marvelled.

“I knew—­in my own mind, of course, that I was not to blame,” the girl said, anxiously.  “But it sounded—­horrible.”

Richard bit his lower lip, looked critically at his racket, slowly shook his head.

“I didn’t mind what any one thought,” Harriet said, reading his thought.  “But they did!”

“They?” Richard repeated, patiently.

“Everyone,” she supplied, promptly.  “Your wife, your mother, Mary Putnam!  Even Mrs. Tabor.”

“I suppose so!” he conceded, after a pause.  And beneath his breath he added, “Isabelle—­Ida Tabor!”

His tone was all she asked of exquisite reassurance.

“I hoped you wouldn’t!” she said, standing up with clasped hands and a sudden brightening of her tired and colourless face.  “That’s what I tried to make myself believe you would feel!  I wanted so to leave it all behind.  I thought he had gone, that it was all over, that what it was mattered more than what it sounded like!  I thought I could save Nina better, with what I knew, than any one else!  But last night,” Harriet added, “proved to me that I had been all wrong.  I’ve been so worried,” she added, with utter faith in his decision.  “I don’t know what you think we had better do.”

For a full minute Richard watched her in silence.  Then he said, mildly: 

“About Nina, you mean?”

“About everything!” Harriet suddenly laughed gaily, like a child.  Life seemed once more straight and pleasant in this exquisite June morning; she felt puzzled, but somehow no longer afraid.  The menacing horrors of all the years, the vague uneasiness that she had never quite dared to face, were fluttering about her awakening spirit like Alice’s pack of cards.