ney had taken the
precaution to warn her against the danger of conjugal confidences in
the matter of Nan Brent; devoutly she wished she had had the common
sense to have left those delicate negotiations entirely in the hands
of dear, capable, faithful Andrew, for, delicate as they had been, she
realized now, when it was too late, that in all probability Mr. Daney,
although a mere man, would have concluded them without compromising
the McKaye family. Surely he would have had the good taste to assure
Nan that he was acting entirely upon his own initiative.

On the instant, Mrs. McKaye hated the unfortunate general manager. She
told herself that, had he been possessed of the brains of a chipmunk,
he would have pointed out to her the danger of her course; that he had
not done so was proof that the craven had feared to compromise
himself. He had made a cat's-paw of her, that's what he had done! He
had taken advantage of a momentary lack of caution--the result of her
impetuous mother love. Ah, what a blockhead the man was, not to have
warned her of the diplomatic dangers she was risking! At that moment,
placid Nellie McKaye could have shrieked with fury; it would have been
a relief to her if she could have stuck her hatpin in that monumental
chucklehead, Daney. Like so many of her sex, the good lady's code of
sportsmanship was a curious one, to say the least. It had not been
prudence but an instinctive desire to protect her son that had moved
her to be careful when begging Nan to return to Port Agnew, to
indicate that this request predicated no retirement from the resolute
stand which the family had taken against the latter's alliance with
Donald. In a hazy, indefinite way, she had realized the importance of
nullifying any tendency on her part to compromise herself or her
family by the mere act of telephoning to Nan, and with the
unintentional brutality of a not very intelligent, tactless woman she
had taken this means of protection.

Curiously enough, it had not occurred to her until this moment that
she had done something shameful and cruel and stupid and unwomanly.
She shriveled mentally in the contemplation of it. Not until her
husband had so unexpectedly revealed to her a hitherto hidden facet of
his character--his masculine code of an eye for an eye and a tooth for
a tooth--did she realize how dreadfully she had blundered. She
realized now that, without having given the slightest thought to the
commission of an act unw