ily; but the
insinuations about Beaufort made him reckless. He was mindful,
however, if not of his own danger, at least of the fact that Mr.
Jackson was under his mother's roof, and consequently his guest. Old
New York scrupulously observed the etiquette of hospitality, and no
discussion with a guest was ever allowed to degenerate into a
disagreement.

"Shall we go up and join my mother?" he suggested curtly, as Mr.
Jackson's last cone of ashes dropped into the brass ashtray at his
elbow.

On the drive homeward May remained oddly silent; through the darkness,
he still felt her enveloped in her menacing blush. What its menace
meant he could not guess: but he was sufficiently warned by the fact
that Madame Olenska's name had evoked it.

They went upstairs, and he turned into the library. She usually
followed him; but he heard her passing down the passage to her bedroom.

"May!" he called out impatiently; and she came back, with a slight
glance of surprise at his tone.

"This lamp is smoking again; I should think the servants might see that
it's kept properly trimmed," he grumbled nervously.

"I'm so sorry: it shan't happen again," she answered, in the firm
bright tone she had learned from her mother; and it exasperated Archer
to feel that she was already beginning to humour him like a younger Mr.
Welland. She bent over to lower the wick, and as the light struck up
on her white shoulders and the clear curves of her face he thought:
"How young she is! For what endless years this life will have to go
on!"

He felt, with a kind of horror, his own strong youth and the bounding
blood in his veins. "Look here," he said suddenly, "I may have to go
to Washington for a few days--soon; next week perhaps."

Her hand remained on the key of the lamp as she turned to him slowly.
The heat from its flame had brought back a glow to her face, but it
paled as she looked up.

"On business?" she asked, in a tone which implied that there could be
no other conceivable reason, and that she had put the question
automatically, as if merely to finish his own sentence.

"On business, naturally. There's a patent case coming up before the
Supreme Court--" He gave the name of the inventor, and went on
furnishing details with all Lawrence Lefferts's practised glibness,
while she listened attentively, saying at intervals: "Yes, I see."

"The change will do you good," she said simply, when he had finished;
"and you must be sure to