held. It was
decided that Storri should continue those dinners with the Harleys;
Dorothy might discover a final wisdom.

Storri told Mrs. Hanway-Harley that he feared Dorothy had given her
heart to Richard. This admission was gall and wormwood to the self-love
of Storri. He made it, however, and recalled Mrs. Hanway-Harley to
Dorothy's chatter concerning the morning talks between Richard and
Senator Hanway.

"That odious printer," said Storri, who called all newspaper people
printers, "comes each day to get his budget of news from your
illustrious brother, madam; and, believe me, your daughter makes some
sly pretext for being with them--with him, the odious printer! Bah! I
wish we were in Russia; I would blow out the rogue's life like a candle!
Why, my Czar would laugh were so mean a being to succeed in obstructing
the love of his Storri!"

Mrs. Hanway-Harley was struck by the suggestion that Richard was
Dorothy's lover in the dark. She remembered Dorothy's teasing praises of
Richard, and her talk of how sapiently he discoursed with "Uncle Pat."
The praises occurred on that evening when, from her wisdom, she, Mrs.
Hanway-Harley, had warned her innocent child against the error of
entertaining one gentleman with the merits of another. Mrs.
Hanway-Harley even brought to mind the replies made by her innocent
child to those warnings; and her own wrath began to stir as the
suspicion grew that her innocent child had been secretly laughing at
her. Like all shallow folk, Mrs. Hanway-Harley prided herself upon being
as deep as the sea, and it did her self-esteem no good to think that she
had been sounded, not to say charted, by her own daughter, who had gone
steering in and out, keeping always the channel of her credulity, and
never once running aground. Little lamps of anger lighted their evil
wicks in Mrs. Hanway-Harley's eyes as she thus reflected.

And that morning armful of roses? No, Storri was not the moving cause of
their fragrant appearance upon the Harley premises. Storri regretted
that he had not once bethought him of this delicate attention. Mrs.
Hanway-Harley wrung her hands. It was Dorothy who first planted in her
the belief that the flowers were from Storri. Oh, the artful jade! That
was the cause of her timorous objections when Mrs. Hanway-Harley, with
the fond yet honorable curiosity of a mother, spoke of mentioning those
flowers to Storri. The perjured Dorothy was aware of their felon origin;
doubtless, she