u," she faltered.

"Girl o' mine, we have every right in the world. Love is never wrong
unless it is a theft or a robbery. There is nothing between me and
Virginia that is not artificial and conventional, no tie that ought not
to be broken, none that should ever of right have existed. Love has the
right of way before mere convention a hundredfold."

"Ah! If I were sure."

"But I was to be a teacher to you and a judge for you."

"And I was to be a conscience to you."

"But on this I am quite clear. I can be a conscience to myself.
However, there is no hurry. Time's a great solvent."

"And we can go on loving each other in the meantime."

He lifted her little pink fingers and kissed them. "Yes, we can do that
all the time."

CHAPTER 26. BREAKS ONE AND MAKES ANOTHER ENGAGEMENT

Miss Balfour's glass made her irritably aware of cheeks unduly flushed
and eyes unusually bright. Since she prided herself on being sufficient
for the emergencies of life, she cast about in her mind to determine
which of the interviews that lay before her was responsible for her
excitement. It was, to be sure, an unusual experience for a young woman
to be told that her fiance would be unable to marry her, owing to a
subsequent engagement, but she looked forward to it with keen
anticipation, and would not have missed it for the world. Since she
pushed the thought of the other interview into the background of her
mind and refused to contemplate it at all, she did not see how that
could lend any impetus to her pulse.

But though she was pleasantly excited as she swept into the
reception-room, Ridgway was unable to detect the fact in her cool
little nod and frank, careless handshake. Indeed, she looked so
entirely mistress of herself, so much the perfectly gowned exquisite,
that he began to dread anew the task he had set himself. It is not a
pleasant thing under the most favorable circumstances to beg off from
marrying a young woman one has engaged oneself to, and Ridgway did not
find it easier because the young woman looked every inch a queen, and
was so manifestly far from suspecting the object of his call.

"I haven't had a chance to congratulate you personally yes," she said,
after they had drifted to chairs. "I've been immensely proud of you."

"I got your note. It was good of you to write as soon as you heard."

She swept him with one of her smile-lit side glances. "Though, of
course, in a way, I was felicitating myself when I c