e idea of the divorce of his own
daughter--a Lanley--Mrs. Adelaide Lanley, Mrs. Adelaide Severance. His
sense of fitness was shocked, though he pleaded with her first on the
ground of duty, and then under the threat of scandal. With her beauty
and Severance's popularity, for from his college days he had been
extremely popular with men, the divorce excited uncommon interest.
Severance's unconcealed grief, a rather large circle of devoted friends
in whom he confided, and the fact that Adelaide had to go to Nevada to
get her divorce, led most people to believe that she had simply found
some one she liked better. Mr. Lanley would have believed it himself,
but he couldn't. Farron had not appeared until she had been divorced for
several years.

Lanley still cherished an affection for Severance, who had very soon
married again, a local belle in the Massachusetts manufacturing town
where he now lived. She was said to resemble Adelaide.

No, Mr. Lanley could not see that he had had anything to reproach himself
with in regard to his daughter's first marriage. They had been young, of
course; all the better. He had known the Severances for years; and Joe
was handsome, hard working, had rowed on his crew, and every one spoke
well of him. Certainly they had been in love--more in love than he liked
to see two people, at least when one of them was his own daughter. He had
suggested their waiting a year or two, but no one had backed him up. The
Severances had been eager for the marriage, naturally. Mr. Lanley could
still see the young couple as they turned from the altar, young,
beautiful, and confident.

He had missed his daughter terribly, not only her physical presence in
the house, but the exercise of his influence over her, which in old
times had been perhaps a trifle autocratic. He had hated being told what
Joe thought and said; yet he could hardly object to her docility. That
was the way he had brought her up. He did not reckon pliancy in a woman
as a weakness; or if he had had any temptation to do so, it had vanished
in the period when Joe Severance had taken to drink. In that crisis
Adelaide had been anything but weak. Every one had been so grateful to
her,--he and Joe and the Severances,--and then immediately afterward the
crash came.

Women! Mr. Lanley shook his head, still moving briskly northward with
that quick jaunty walk of his. And this second marriage--what about that?
They seemed happy. Farron was a fine fellow, b