Love had been and would remain the one big thing in her own life, the only thing that mattered, and so she could understand, even as she suffered, what this Great Emotion meant to Gilbert.

She adopted his words in thinking it all over.

They appealed to her as being exactly right.
She too was comforted, because she saw a chance that Gilbert, with the aid of the utmost tact and the most tender affection, might be drawn back to her and mended.

She almost used Hosack's caustic expression "rescued." The word came into her mind but was instantly discarded because it was obvious that Joan, however impishly she had played with Gilbert, was unaffected.

Angry as it made her to know that any girl could see in Gilbert merely a man with whom to fool she was supremely thankful that the complication was not as tragic as it might have been.
So long as Joan held out, the ruin of her marriage was incomplete.
Hope, therefore, gleamed like a distant light.