children; his
manner to-day was kind and considerate. He had to an extent measurably
rehabilitated himself as a heroic public character, a man of honor and a
husband to be proud of; but she had not spent a sleepless night and a
gray day without fortifying herself against him. All day her eyes had
been fixed upon an abandoned squirrel box in the crotch of an elm
outside her window; it had become the repository of her thoughts, the
habitation of her sorrows. She turned her head slightly so that her eyes
might rest upon this tabernacle of fear and illusion, and renewed the
assault refreshed.

"How is it, then, that newspapers away off in New York and Massachusetts
speak of you in this outrageous fashion? They're so far away that it
seems strange they speak of you at all."

He laughed with relief, feeling that the question marked a retreat
toward weaker fortifications.

"You're not very complimentary, are you, Hallie? They must think me of
some importance or they'd let me alone. I wouldn't subscribe to that
clipping bureau if you fear we're too much in the limelight. I've been
taking the service of one of these bureaus for several years, and I read
every line the papers print about me. It's part of the regular routine
in my office to paste them in scrapbooks."

"I shouldn't think you could burn them fast enough; what if the children
should see them some day!"

"Well, you may be surprised to know that they're not all so bitter. Once
in a long while I get a kind word. That bill I got through the assembly
separating hardened criminals from those susceptible of reform--the
indeterminate sentence law--was praised by penologists all over the
country. It's all in the day's work; sometimes you're patted on the back
and the next time they kick you down stairs. Without political influence
you have no chance to help the good causes or defeat the bad schemes."

"Yes, I suppose that is true," she murmured weakly.

He had successfully met and turned her attack and the worst had passed;
but he expected her to make some reference to Thatcher's lawsuit for the
control of the "Courier" and he was not disappointed. Marian, who had a
genius for collecting disagreeable information and a dramatic instinct
for using it effectively, had apprised her of it. This hazarding of Mrs.
Owen's favor became now the gravamen of his offense, the culmination of
all his offenses. She demanded to know why he had secretly borrowed
money of her aunt, when