mplete," he said at last, coldly. "Many go
down here, make a slip and bark their shins, but you have used two
years in doing for yourself altogether."

Roper Ellwell hung his head.

"So the Dean said; and there's something else." Jarvis Thornton ceased
to smoke as he went on. "I am married; the old man will never stand
that, and it will break up the mater and my sisters fearfully." In
short, he had come to Thornton, with the confidence that an
acquaintance with an older man inspires, to beg him to break the news
to his people. Imbeciles gravitate to the strong.

"Why don't you go yourself?" Thornton inquired, sick of the foolish
affair. But one glance at the drooping, disjointed, miserable figure
before him answered his question. He sat for some minutes debating the
point with himself. He could make a conventional excuse, and play the
man of the world, who did not involve himself with unpleasant people.
But his imagination presented the picture of the two sad women; their
last hope knocked away by this cropping out of the family blight.
Perhaps he could put it to them in a better light than either Roper or
his father. He saw again the girl's face standing on the lawn in the
summer twilight--a face that must be constantly sad.

"Well," he said, "is she a bad lot, the woman you have induced to
share your future?"

Young Ellwell was too miserable to take fire at this brutality.

"No, she isn't their sort though; she is a Swedish girl; she is a
nurse in a hospital."

"You were forced to marry her?" the older man asked.

Ellwell nodded assent.

"And now she is making it uncomfortable for you."

"I am trying to find something to do," the young fellow protested.
"Then I won't trouble them; but if I go down there the old man will
fling me out of the house."

In short, Jarvis Thornton rose early the next morning, and before the
sun had heated the road, was on his way to the Four Corners. There was
not much that he could do, after all, in his pitiful errand; at least,
for the mother. One more insult for her to accept, to be borne in
stupid passivity. But for the daughter who had to live, it would be a
different question; and by the time he had reached Middleton, he had
not made up his mind how the tale was to be told.

It was warm when he walked his horse over the gravelled drive at the
Four Corners. Mrs. Ellwell and her elder daughter were sitting on the
piazza sewing. Pete was washing carriages; the dogs were asl