Or you can guess."
"She thought father would approve of a marriage between you if she
became an heiress."
"Partly that, and partly she seemed to believe that I'd have spoken to
her of love if she hadn't been a kind of dependent on my father. I tried
to make her understand without putting it into brutal words, that I did
love her of course, but only as a cousin. It's the devil having to tell
a woman you don't want her! I'm not sure she did entirely understand,
for she wrote me a letter afterward--it followed me to Dresden, and came
the day after Marie had promised to be my wife. I didn't answer. I
thought when Idina heard of my marriage she'd see why I hadn't replied,
and why it was kinder not to write. I knew she would hear through
father, for she corresponds with him. He is very punctilious about
answering letters; and suspecting nothing he would tell the news. When I
found her with Marie yesterday--but I see now I was a fool. These
melodramatic things don't happen. And after all, Idina's a cold woman."
"I wonder?"
"Well, anyhow, she was very civil to me and pleasant to Marie, whom I
questioned afterward about what Idina had said before I came in. It
seems there was nothing--but I explained to my wife that there'd been a
boy and girl friendship between Idina and me, a sort of cousinly half
flirtation, nothing more. And really there _was_ nothing more."
"Certainly not," Vanno agreed, emphatically. "But it's just as well to
tell Marie, so that in case Idina should do something--one of those
things women call 'catty'--she'd be prepared.
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