d that even petty people can see how dreary and
stupid their lives are when a person like Madeline comes along? So they
hate her."

"It's good of you to consider my feelings how they grow, and to try to
bolster them up," Madeline smiled. "But I am fearfully tired. I must go
home. I hope that my father and mother will never hear of this."

"Why should they?" said Mr. Lenox. "It's only a trifle after all,
though, to be true to her nature, Vera must needs philosophize about it.
It's only a trifle."

"Except for Dick," Ellery exploded.

"Except for Dick," Mr. Lenox echoed.

"It's a great pity," Mrs. Lenox meditated, "that Dick can't knock her
down and then they could start again on a proper basis."

"It is a disadvantage to be a gentleman," laughed her husband.

"Vera," said Madeline impulsively, "you won't let this make any
difference between us and Mrs. Percival? If she is a little twisted,
poor child, she has had a cruel training; and she needs decent women all
the more. I--I really have quite got over my anger with her--and don't
let us lose Dick. Dick is like my brother. I mustn't break with him. We
must all be good to him."

"I do not know that I feel any large philanthropy," answered Mrs. Lenox,
with something between a laugh and a wry face. "But as I have invited
them as well as you to spend Easter with us in the country, I suppose
the ordinary laws of society will require me to behave myself." The
older woman kissed Madeline warmly, and Ellery moved out with her. He
had so entirely made up his mind to walk home with her that he quite
forgot to ask her permission.

He began to talk to her about himself, for almost the first time in his
reticent intimacy, and she forgot her own affairs, as he meant she
should, in listening.

Afterward she could not remember his words because parallel with them
she was reading her own interpretation. Already in a vague way she
understood him, but his little story gave her the crystallized
impression.

She had a picture of a lonely childhood, fatherless and motherless and
pervaded with a longing for love that early learned to keep silence.
That had been the first step in his self-possession. Education had been
hard to get, and yet he had got what to the sons of rich men comes
easily, and because to him it meant struggle, it had been the more
treasured. Knowledge came hard because his mind worked slowly and
painfully; therefore his grip was the tighter, and the habits of t