The girl's gravity and lucidity sustained themselves. "As a remedy for the single life." Oh, she had mastered the matter now! "But I won't take him!"
"Ah, then, why didn't you let me know?" Mrs. Gracedew panted.
"I was on the very point of it when he came in and interrupted us." Cora clearly felt she might be wicked, but was at least not stupid. "It's just to let you know that I'm here now."
Ah, the difference it made! This difference, for Mrs. Gracedew, suddenly shimmered in all the place, and her companion's fixed eyes caught in her face the reflection of it. "Excuse me—I misunderstood. I somehow took for granted———!" She stopped, a trifle awkwardly—suddenly tender, for Cora, as to the way she had inevitably seen it.
"You took for granted I'd jump at him? Well, you can take it for granted I won't!"
Mrs. Gracedew, fairly admiring her, put it sympathetically. "You prefer the single life?"
"No—but I don't prefer him!" Cora was crystal-bright.
Her light, indeed, for her friend, was at first almost blinding; it took Mrs. Gracedew a moment to distinguish—which she then did,
