ut not, it seemed to him,
so attractive to a woman as Severance. Could he hold a woman like
Adelaide? He wasn't a man to stand any nonsense, though, and Mr. Lanley
nodded; then, as it were, withdrew the nod on remembering that poor Joe
had not wanted to stand any nonsense either. What in similar
circumstances could Farron do? Adelaide always resented his asking how
things were going, but how could he help being anxious? How could any one
rest content on a hillside who had once been blown up by a volcano?

He might not have been any more content if he had stayed to dinner at his
son-in-law's, as he had been asked to do. The Farrons were alone.
Mathilde was going to a dinner, with a dance after. She came into the
dining-room to say good night and to promise to be home early, not to
stay and dance. She was not allowed two parties on successive nights, not
because her health was anything but robust, but rather because her mother
considered her too young for such vulgar excess.

When she had gone, Farron observed:

"That child has a will of iron."

"Vincent!" said his wife. "She does everything I suggest to her."

"Her will just now is to please you in everything. Wait until she
rebels."

"But women don't rebel against the people they love. I don't have to tell
you that, do I? I never have to manoeuver the child, never have to coax
or charm her to do what I want."

He smiled at her across the table.

"You have great faith in those methods, haven't you?"

"They work, Vin."

He nodded as if no one knew that better than he.

Soon after dinner he went up-stairs to write some letters. She followed
him about ten o'clock. She came and leaned one hand on his shoulder and
one on his desk.

"Still working?" she said. She had been aware of no desire to see what he
was writing, but she was instantly aware that his blotting-paper had
fallen across the sheet, that the sheet was not a piece of note-paper,
but one of a large pad on which he had been apparently making notes.

Her diamond bracelet had slipped down her wrist and lay upon the
blotting-paper; he slowly and carefully pushed it up her slim, round arm
until it once more clung in place.

"I've nearly finished," he said; and to her ears there was some under
sound of pain or of constraint in his tone.

A little later he strolled, still dressed, into her room. She was already
in bed, and he came and sat on the foot of the bed, with one foot tucked
under him and his a