nd I began to laugh. "You
know Hubbell, our inspector of agencies?"

"What has he got to do with it?"

"Hubbell has had a romantic moment. He thinks that in view of the
restitution Tedham made as far as he could, and his excellent
record--elsewhere--it would be a fine thing for the Reciprocity to
employ him again in our office, and he wanted to suggest it to the
actuary."

"Basil! You didn't allow him to do such a cruel thing as that?"

"No, my dear, I am happy to say that I sat upon that dramatic climax."

This measurably consoled my wife, but she did not cease to denounce the
idea for some moments. When she ended, I asked her if she would allow
the company to employ Tedham in a subordinate place in another city, and
when she signified that this might be suffered, I said that this was
what would probably be done. Then I added, seriously, that I thoroughly
liked the notion of it, and that I took it for a testimony that poor old
Tedham was right, and that he had at last fully expiated his offence
against society.

His daughter continued to live with her aunt and uncle, but Tedham used
to spend his holidays with them, and, however incongruously, they got on
together very well, I believe. The girl kept the name of Hasketh, and I
do not suppose that many people knew her relation to Tedham. It appeared
that our little romantic supposition of a love affair, which the reunion
of father and child must shatter, was for the present quite gratuitous.
But if it should ever come to that, my wife and I had made up our minds
to let God manage. We said that we had already had one narrow escape in
proposing to better the divine way of doing, and we should not interfere
again. Still I cannot truly say that we gave Providence our entire
confidence as long as there remained the chance of further evil through
the sort of romance we had dreaded for the girl. Till she was married
there was an incompleteness, a potentiality of trouble, in the incident
apparently closed that haunted us with a distrustful anxiety. We had to
wait several years for the end, but it came eventually, and she was
married to a young Englishman whom she had met in Canada, and whom she
told all about her unhappy family history before she permitted herself
to accept him.

During the one brief interview I had with him, for the purpose of
further blackening her father's character (for so I understood her
insistence that I should see the young man), he seemed not onl