"Do you think your sister Ida would have my nephew Charles?”
Her sister Ida? Quite a little thrill of relief and of pleasure ran through her at the thought. Ida and Charles Westmacott. She had never thought of it. And yet they had been a good deal together. They had played tennis. They had shared the tandem tricycle. Again came the thrill of joy, and close at its heels the cold questionings of conscience. Why this joy? What was the real source of it? Was it that deep down, somewhere pushed back in the black recesses of the soul, there was the thought lurking that if Charles prespered in his wooing then Harold Denver would still be free? How mean, how unmaidenly, how unsisterly the thought! She crushed it down and thrust it aside, but still it would push up its wicked little head. She crimsoned with shame at her own baseness, as she turned once more to her companion.
“I really do not know,” she said,
“She is not engaged?"
“Not that I know of.”
“You speak hesitatingly.”
“Because I am not sure. But he may ask. She cannot but be flattered.”
“Quite so. I tell him that it is the most practical compliment which a man can pay to a woman. He is a little shy, but when he
