e been in some time."

"Yes,"--she stuck the first pin into the upholstery of the sofa,--"but
Pringle told me Mathilde had a visitor, and I thought it was my duty to
stop and be a little parental."

"A young man?"

"Yes. I forget his name--just like all these young men nowadays, alert
and a little too much at his ease, but amusing in his way. He said, among
other things--"

But Farron, it appeared, was not exclusively interested in the words of
Mathilde's visitor; for at this instant, perceiving that his wife had
disengaged herself from her veil, he sat up, caught her to him, and
pressed his lips to hers.

"O Adelaide!" he said, and it seemed to her he spoke with a sort of
agony.

She held him away from her.

"Vincent, what is it?" she asked.

"What is what?"

"Is anything wrong?"

"Between us?"

Oh, she knew that method of his, to lead her on to make definite
statements about impressions of which nothing definite could be
accurately said.

"No, I won't be pinned down," she said; "but I feel it, the way a
rheumatic feels it, when the wind goes into the east."

He continued to look at her gravely; she thought he was going to speak
when a knock came at the door. It was Pringle announcing the visit of
Mr. Lanley.

Adelaide rose slowly to her feet, and, walking to her husband's
dressing-table, repinned her hat, and caught up the little stray locks
which grew in deep, sharp points at the back of her head.

"You'll come down, too?" she said.

Farron was looking about for his coat, and as he put it on he
observed dryly:

"The young man is seeing all the family."

"Oh, he won't mind," she answered. "He probably hasn't the slightest wish
to see Mathilde alone. They both struck me as sorry when I left them;
they were running down. You can't imagine, Vin, how little romance there
is among all these young people."

"They leave it to us," he answered. This was exactly in his accustomed
manner, and as they went down-stairs together her heart felt lighter,
though the long, black, shiny pin stuck harmlessly into the upholstery of
the sofa was like a mile-stone, for afterward she remembered that her
questions had gone unanswered.

Wayne was still in the drawing-room, and Mathilde, who loved her
grandfather, was making a gentle fuss over him, a process which consisted
largely in saying: "O Grandfather! Oh, you didn't! O _Grandfather_!"

Mr. Lanley, though a small man and now over sixty, had a distinct
prese