have been a fool. He thought he was going to live the rest of his
life alone with his broken heart. I didn't mean to allow that.
It's taken a long time--over two years, from start to finish--but
I've done it. He's a sentimentalist. I worked on his sympathy, and
last night I made him propose to me at the Fletchers' dance.'

Mrs Ford had not listened to these confidences unmoved. Several
times she had tried to interrupt, but had been brushed aside. Now
she spoke sharply.

'You know I was not going to say anything of the kind. And I don't
think you should speak in this horrible, cynical way of--of--'

She stopped, flushing. There were moments when she hated Cynthia.
These occurred for the most part when the latter, as now, stirred
her to an exhibition of honest feeling which she looked on as
rather unbecoming. Mrs Ford had spent twenty years trying to
forget that her husband had married her from behind the counter of
a general store in an Illinois village, and these lapses into the
uncultivated genuineness of her girlhood made her uncomfortable.

'I wasn't going to say anything of the kind,' she repeated.

Cynthia was all smiling good-humour.

'I know. I was only teasing you. "Stringing", they call it in your
country, don't they?'

Mrs Ford was mollified.