a severe glance. "But men have their own code of
morals, and always stand by each other. Now I happen to know that he
is running around with one of Felicity's servants. Out at the Old
Continental, the other evening, we found them in possession of a room
we had engaged for dinner. He practically ordered us out of the place
until he and Miss Harpster, as he called her, chose to take their
departure. Did you ever hear of such a thing in your life?"

"Never," he answered. "Emmet would be quite a catch for her, would n't
he?"

She threw up her hands with a gesture of infinite scorn. "He never in
this world intends to marry her. I 'm sure of that."

He wondered whether she guessed how truly she had spoken, but her face
was sphinx-like in its hard acerbity. She seemed to shrink and grow
pinched with the intensity of her emotion, and her next words, spoken
almost as a soliloquy, showed the trend of her thoughts.

"I had n't quite made up my mind to write to Felicity yet, but now I
will, this very night. She ought not to let such a girl stay in the
house. But I 'm afraid my writing will only make her determined--she
's so perverse."

The words only completed his mystification. It now occurred to him
that this might be merely the excessive virtue of a New Englander, that
Mrs. Parr merely wished to save her friend from the mortification of a
scandal belowstairs in her house. Her prejudice against Emmet was
sufficient to explain her belief in his bad intentions regarding Lena
Harpster.

"On second thoughts I sha'n't do it," she declared, with a curious
gleam in her eyes; then she closed her lips firmly, as if to dismiss
the subject.

Leigh could only guess why she had changed her mind, and had suddenly
decided to let matters take their course. Assuming that she knew
nothing of Emmet's true relationship with Felicity and thought merely
that her friend was infatuated with him, it was possible that she might
even welcome a moral breakdown on Emmet's part, provided it would open
Felicity's eyes to his true quality. He was tempted to believe that
Mrs. Parr would willingly let Lena be sacrificed to accomplish this
result. The various possibilities that lay concealed behind his
companion's enigmatical features were bewildering, and the subject was
too delicate for further probing. As the fine vista of Birdseye Avenue
opened up before them, he turned the subject by remarking that
Christmas never seemed so truly C