She combated them as vigorously as ever, but she lost her dislike to discussing them.

As it became more and more obvious that Kendal found in Elfrida a reward for the considerable amount of time he spent in her society, so Janet arrived at the point of encouraging her heresies, especially with their personal application.

She took secret comfort in them; she hoped they would not change, and she was too honest to disguise to herself the reason.

If Elfrida cared for him, Janet assured herself, the case would be entirely different--she would stamp out her own feeling without mercy, to the tiniest spark.

She would be glad, in time, to have crushed it for Elfrida, though it did seem that it would be more easily done for a stranger, somebody she wouldn't have to know afterward.