sented above all the compulsory discussion which it
involved, of her most intimate affairs, with a stranger and her social
inferior. All sorts of suspicions, indeed, ran through her mind as to
the motives that could have prompted Mrs. Meadows to hurry up to
Scotland, without taking even the decently polite trouble to announce
herself, bringing this unlikely and trumped-up tale. Most probably, a
mean jealousy of her husband, and his greater social success!--a
determination to force herself on people who had not paid the same
attention to herself as to him, to _make_ them pay attention,
willy-nilly. Of course Herbert had undesirable acquaintances, and was
content to go about with people entirely beneath him, in birth and
education. Everybody knew it, alack! But he was really not such a
fool--such a heartless fool--as this story implied! Mrs. Meadows had
been taken in--willingly taken in--had exaggerated everything she said
for her own purposes. The mother's wrath indeed was rapidly rising to
the smiting point, when a change in the narrative arrested her.

"And then--I couldn't help it!"--there was a new note of agitation in
Doris's voice--"but what had happened was so _horrid_--it was so like
seeing a man going to ruin under one's eyes, for, of course, one knew
that she would get hold of him again--that I ran out after your son and
begged him to break with her, not to see her again, to take the
opportunity, and be done with her! And then he told me quite calmly that
he _must_ marry her, that he could not help himself, but he would never
live with her. He would marry her at a registry office, provide for her,
and leave her. And then he said he would do it _at once_--that he was
going to his lawyers to arrange everything as to money and so on--on
condition that she never troubled him again. He was eager to get it
done--that he might be delivered from her--from her company--which one
could see had become dreadful to him. I implored him not to do such a
thing--to pay any money rather than do it--but not to marry her! I
begged him to think of you--and his father. But he said he was bound to
her--he had compromised her, or some such thing; and he had given his
word in writing. There was only one thing which could stop it--if she
had told him lies about her former life. But he had no reason to think
she had; and he was not going to try and find out. So then--I saw a ray
of daylight--"

She stopped abruptly, looking full at the