are a
little unwise at our time of life."

He caught her hand and for some reason, possibly his great agitation,
pressed her finger-nails deep into the convex bulb of his large hot
thumb, as if he were intent upon testing their sharpness.

Mrs. Delarayne removed her hand. "Joseph, I had hoped you were not going
to refer to this again for some while. I have told you hundreds of
times, or more, that a woman cannot marry with decency a second time
when she has two strapping daughters who have not yet married once."

Sir Joseph shrugged his shoulders.

"It's all very well," pursued the widow, "but it is difficult enough for
Cleo to forgive my having married at all. I could not possibly confront
her with a second husband before she, poor girl, had met her first. Oh
no!--it would be too great an insult. I'd die of shame. No, before you
have me you'll have to get my daughters married. That bargain I strike
with you."

He smiled ecstatically. "Promise?"

"I promise."

He bent forward and kissed her very clumsily, and Mrs. Delarayne by
blowing her nose was able deftly to wipe her mouth without his noticing
the movement.

"What is that young fool, my secretary, doing?" he enquired at last.
"Did I not bring him and Cleo together all through the spring at
Brineweald Park?"

"Denis is a nincompoop," Mrs. Delarayne declared drily. "I don't believe
for a minute that we should any of us be here if he had taken Adam's
place in the Garden of Eden. What a fortunate thing it was, by-the-by,
that the Almighty did not choose a very modern sort of man to live in
sin with Eve!"

Sir Joseph laughed. "Denis a nincompoop? I don't believe it."

Mrs. Delarayne snorted.

"But how are they getting on?"

"Don't ask me," she sighed wearily. "They philander. They are now at the
very dangerous and inconclusive stage of being 'practically engaged.' It
never signifies anything, because no man who really means business has
the patience to be practically engaged."

Sir Joseph looked and felt sympathetic.

"They hold hands, I believe," the widow resumed, "and discuss the
philosophers. Probably in a year's time if all goes well they will kiss
and discuss the poets."

Sir Joseph uttered an expletive of surprise.

"Yes--I'm disappointed in Denis. I don't trust these very cheerful men,
who have a ready laugh and a sense of humour. They laugh to conceal the
fact that they cannot crow, and they crack jokes because they cannot
break hearts. G