ot through her
mind: it was exactly the right answer if he could make it good.

In the meantime Mr. Lanley began to grow dissatisfied with the prolonged
role of spectator. He preferred danger to oblivion; and turning to Mrs.
Wayne, he said, with his politest smile:

"How are the bridges?"

"Oh, dear," she answered, "I must have been terribly tactless--to make
you so angry."

Mr. Lanley drew himself up.

"I was not angry," he said.

She looked at him with a sort of gentle wonder.

"You gave me the impression of being."

The very temperateness of the reply made him see that he had been
inaccurate.

"Of course I was angry," he said. "What I mean is that I don't understand
why I was."

Meantime, on the opposite side of the table, Mathilde and Pete were
equally immersed, murmuring sentences of the profoundest meaning behind
faces which they felt were mask-like.

Farron looked down the table at his wife. Why, he wondered, did she want
to tease him to-night, of all nights in his life?

When they came out of the dining-room Pete said to Mathilde with the
utmost clearness:

"And what was that magazine you spoke of?"

She had spoken of no magazine, but she caught the idea, the clever,
rather wicked idea. He made her work her mind almost too fast sometimes,
but she enjoyed it.

"Wasn't it this?" she asked, with a beating heart.

They sat down on the sofa and bent their heads over it with student-like
absorption.

"I haven't any idea what it is," she whispered.

"Oh, well, I suppose there's something or other in it."

"I think your mother is perfectly wonderful--wonderful."

"I love you so."

The older people took a little longer to settle down. Mr. Lanley stood on
the hearth-rug, with a cigar in his mouth and his head thrown very far
back. Adelaide sank into a chair, looking, as she often did, as if she
had just been brilliantly well posed for a photograph. Farron was
silent. Mrs. Wayne sat, as she had a bad habit of doing, on one foot. The
two groups were sufficiently separated for distinct conversations.

"Is this a conference?" asked Farron.

Mrs. Wayne made it so by her reply.

"The whole question is, Are they really in love? At least, that's my
view."

"In love!" Adelaide twisted her shoulders. "What can they know of it for
another ten years? You must have some character, some knowledge to fall
in love. And these babes--"

"No," said Mr. Lanley, stoutly; "you're all wrong, Adelaide. It's fi