me-and-fish dinner at Tafft's in immediate prospect,
and you couldn't see any difference between the Tedham of to-day and the
Tedham of ten years ago, except that the actual Tedham is clean-shaved
and wears his hair cut rather close."

"Basil!"

"Why do you object to the fact? Did you imagine he had changed
inwardly?"

"He must have suffered."

"But does suffering change people? I doubt it. Certain material
accessories of Tedham's have changed. But why should that change Tedham?
Of course, he has suffered, and he suffers still. He threw out some
hints of what he had been through that would have broken my heart if I
hadn't hardened it against him. And he loves his daughter still, and he
wants to see her, poor wretch."

"I suppose he does!" sighed my wife.

"He would hardly take no for an answer from me, when I said I wouldn't
go to the Haskeths for him; and when I fairly shook him off, he wanted
me to ask you to go."

"And what did you say?" she asked, not at all with the resentment I had
counted upon equally with the possible pathos; you never can tell in the
least how any woman will take anything, which is perhaps the reason why
men do not trust women more.

"I told him that it would not be the smallest use to ask you; that you
had forgiven that old affair as well as I had, but that women were
different, and that I knew you wouldn't even see him."

"Well, Basil, I don't know what right you had to put me in that odious
light," said my wife.

"Why, good heavens! _Would_ you have seen him?"

"I don't know whether I would or not. That's neither here nor there. I
don't think it was very nice of you to shift the whole responsibility on
me."

"How did I do that? It seems to me that I kept the whole responsibility
myself."

"Yes, altogether too much. What became of him, then?"

"We walked along a little farther, and then--"

"Then, what? Where is the man?"

"He's down in the parlor," I answered hardily, in the voice of some one
else.

My wife stood up from the lounge, and I rose, too, for whatever penalty
she chose to inflict.

"Well, Basil, that is what I call a very cowardly thing."

"Yes, my dear, it is; I ought to have protected you against his appeal.
But you needn't see him. It's practically the same as if he had not come
here. I can send him away."

"And you call that practically the same! No, _I_ am the one that will
have to do the refusing now, and it is all off your shoulders. And you
kne