"
"No, one certainly can't help it," Mrs. Wake acquiesced. "Though I,
perhaps, should have been too prudish to own to it just now--with poor
Everard hardly in his grave. But that's the comfort of being with a frank,
unscrupulous person like you; one gets it all out and need take no
responsibility."
Mrs. Pakenham smiled over her friend's self-exposure and helped her to
greater comfort with a still more crude, "It will be perfect, you know, if
he does succeed. I suppose there's no doubt that he will."
"I don't know; I really don't know," Mrs. Wake mused.
"One knows well enough that she's tremendously fond of him,--it's just that
that she has taken her stand on so beautifully, so gracefully."
"Yes, so beautifully and so gracefully that while one does know that, one
can't know more--he least of all. He, I'm pretty sure, knows not a scrap
more,"
"But, after all, now that she's free, that is enough."
"Yes--except--".
"Really, my dear, I see no exception. He is a delightful creature, as
sound, as strong, as true; and if he isn't very clever, Valerie is far too
clever herself to mind that, far too clever not to care for how much more
than clever he is."
"Oh, it's not that she doesn't care--"
"What is it, then, you carping, skeptical creature? It's all perfect. An
uncongenial, tiresome husband--and she need have no self-reproach about
him, either--finally out of the way; a reverential adorer at hand; youth
still theirs; money; a delightful place--what more could one ask?"
"Ah," Mrs.
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