Page:Alice Stuyvesant - The Vanity Box.djvu/89

 Millicent Latham, and could easily imagine that a man could adore her. Once Terry had heard some one say, "Milly Latham is an acquired taste, but once the taste is acquired, it's bound to last." She had recalled that speech when she heard of Sir Ian's engagement to his distant cousin; and she recalled it again now.

Milly had seemed to forget all about Terry in the midst of sunshine and marriage; but, in the peculiar circumstances (of which Terry believed her one-time friend to have remained in ignorance), it was better that she should forget. Things being as they were, their intimacy could not have gone on. But now Terry's heart yearned over the dead woman.

"Poor, poor Milly!" She wondered if she had ever thought of Ian's wife unkindly or unjustly? She trusted that she had not. To harbour harsh thoughts would indeed have been unjust, for nothing had been Milly's fault. Ian no doubt had been silent about the past, and Terry herself had kept the secret well. A few hints she might have given in letters at the time, perhaps, before she had known Ian would be leaving India for England. She had mentioned meeting a "cousin of Milly's"; Milly had written back to know "what he was like," and Terry had described him rather enthusiastically, as she had seen him then. That was all. Poor Milly! Ian had been swept off his feet at first sight of her; and Maud said now that