You mean Lois. Yes, of course
she has had a hard time. Who doesn't? But it's rubbish to talk of a
'life's happiness.' In the first place, there isn't such a thing
--nothing lasts so long as a lifetime, I assure you. In the second,
Lois has not sustained any real loss--not any which I can not make
good to her."
"Do you imagine yourself so all-sufficient?" she asked.
"I have confidence in my own powers," he admitted. "That is the first
condition of success. I believe that in a few hours I shall have Lois
on the road to recovery."
"I do not in the least understand your methods," Beatrice said, "but
they have hitherto been so eminently successful that I suppose I ought
not to question them. I hope for the best. I really was rather sorry
for Lois--especially as she behaved so well."
"Are you starting a conscience, Miss Beatrice?" Travers asked gaily.
"I rather suspect you. It would be such a typically feminine
proceeding."
"There you are quite wrong," she answered, with a shade of annoyance
in her cool voice. "A conscience is an appendage which I discarded a
good many years ago as the luxury of respectability. As you know, and
as any woman at the Station would tell you, I am not respectable."
"Whence this anxiety, then?"
"It is purely a practical one. You talk of gratitude--do you really
think anyone is grateful to me for--this?" She waved her hand toward
the lofty, handsomely decorated room before her.
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