f confidence. "She did years ago
when nice women weren't doing it."

He smiled at this, but tenderly. He didn't leave Addington very often,
but he did know what a blaze the vestals of the time keep up.

"No matter," said he, "so long as you don't."

"She drinks brandy," said Esther, "and tells things. I can't repeat what
she tells. She's different from anybody I ever met--and I don't see how
I can make her happy."

By this time Choate saw there was nothing he could do about Aunt
Patricia, and dismissed her from his orderly mind. She was not
absolutely pertinent to Esther's happiness. But he looked grave. There
was somebody, he knew, who was pertinent.

"I haven't succeeded in seeing Jeff yet," he began, with a slight
hesitation. It seemed to him it might be easier for her to hear that
name than the formal words, "your husband". She winced. Choate saw it
and pitied her, as she knew he would. "Is he coming--here?"

She looked at him with large, imploring eyes.

"Must I?" he heard her whispering, it seemed really to herself.

"I don't see how you can help it, dear," he answered. The last word
surprised him mightily. He had never called her "dear". She hadn't even
been "Esther" to him. But the warmth of his compassion and an irritation
that had been working in him with Jeff's return--something like jealousy,
it might even be--drove the little word out of doors and bade it lodge
with her and so betray him. Esther heard the word quite clearly and knew
what volumes of commentary it carried; but Choate, relieved, thought it
had passed her by. She was still beseeching him, even caressing him,
with the liquid eyes.

"You see," she said, "he and I are strangers--almost. He's been away so
long."

"You haven't seen him," said Choate, like an accusation. He had often
had to bruise that snake. He hoped she'd step on it for good.

"No," said Esther. "He didn't wish it."

Choate's sane sense told him that no man could fail to wish it. If Jeff
had forbidden her to come at the intervals when he could see his kin,
she should have battered down his denials and gone to him. She should
have left on his face the warm touch of hers and the cleansing of her
tears. Choate had a tremendous idea of the obligations of what he called
love. He hid what he thought of it in the fastnesses of a shy heart, but
he took delight and found strength, too, in the certainty that there is
unconquerable love, and that it laughs at even the locksmiths