e of you to come so soon!"
she began. Her keen penetration discovered something in his face which
checked the gayety of her welcome. "You don't mean to say that you are
going to spoil our pleasant little dinner by bringing bad news!" she
added, looking at him suspiciously.

"It depends on you to decide that," Randal replied.

"How very complimentary to a poor useless old woman! Don't be
mysterious, my dear. I don't belong to the generation which raises
storms in tea-cups, and calls skirmishes with savages battles. Out with
it!"

Randal handed his paper to her, open at the right place. "There is my
news," he said.

Mrs. Presty looked at the paragraph, and handed _her_ newspaper to
Randal.

"I am indeed sorry to spoil your dramatic effect," she said. "But
you ought to have known that we are only half an hour behind you,
at Sydenham, in the matter of news. The report is premature, my good
friend. But if these newspaper people waited to find out whether a
report is true or false, how much gossip would society get in its
favorite newspapers? Besides, if it isn't true now, it will be true next
week. The author only says, 'It's whispered.' How delicate of him! What
a perfect gentleman!"

"Am I really to understand, Mrs. Presty, that Catherine--"

"You are to understand that Catherine is a widow. I say it with pride, a
widow of my making!"

"If this is one of your jokes, ma'am--"

"Nothing of the sort, sir."

"Are you aware, Mrs. Presty, that my brother--"

"Oh, don't talk of your brother! He's an obstacle in our way, and we
have been compelled to get rid of him."

Randal drew back a step. Mrs. Presty's audacity was something more than
he could understand. "Is this woman mad?" he said to himself.

"Sit down," said Mrs. Presty. "If you are determined to make a serious
business of it--if you insist on my justifying myself--you are to be
pitied for not possessing a sense of humor, but you shall have your own
way. I am put on my defense. Very well. You shall hear how my divorced
daughter and my poor little grandchild were treated at Sandyseal, after
you left us."

Having related the circumstances, she suggested that Randal should
put himself in Catherine's place, before he ventured on expressing an
opinion. "Would you have exposed yourself to be humiliated again in the
same way?" she asked. "And would you have seen your child made to suffer
as well as yourself?"

"I should have kept in retirement for the future