and perpetual
grin, for instance--do help and much increase the operations of your
soul!"

He looked up suddenly.

"What do you think, mother?"

"I think--think, my darling," she said, "that perhaps neither you nor I
are quite ourselves to-night."

"Oh, well I've had rather a beastly day!" Richard dropped back against
the chair cushions again, clasping his hands behind his head. "Or I've
seemed to have it, which comes practically to much the same thing. I
confess I have been rather hipped lately. I suppose it's the weather.
You're not really in a hurry, mother, are you? Come and sit down."

And obediently Katherine drew forward a chair and sat beside him. Those
uprisings of vagrant desire still struggled, combating the dominion of
the fixed idea. But the struggle grew faint and fainter. And then, for
a measurable time, Richard fell silent again while she waited. Verily
there is no sharper discipline for a woman's proud spirit, than that
administered, often quite unconsciously, by the man whom she loves.

"We gave a wretched girl six weeks to-day for robbing her mistress," he
remarked at last. "It was a flagrant case, so I suppose we were
justified. In fact I don't see how we could have done otherwise. But it
went against me awfully, all the same. She has a child to support. Jim
Gould got her into trouble and deserted her, like a cowardly, young
blackguard. However, it's easy to be righteous at another person's
expense. Perhaps I should have done the same in his place. I wonder if
I should?"--

"My dear, we need hardly discuss that point, I think," Lady Calmady
said.

Richard turned his head and smiled at her.

"Poor dear mother, do I bore you? But it is so comfortable to grumble.
I know it's selfish. It's a horrid bad habit, and you ought to blow me
up for it. But then, mother, take it all round, really I don't grumble
much, do I?"

"No, no!" Katherine said quickly. "Indeed, Dickie, you don't."

"I have been awfully afraid though, lately, that I do grumble more than
I imagine," he went on, straightening his head, while his handsome
profile showed clear cut against the dancing brightness of the
firelight. "But it's almost impossible always to carry something about
with you which--which you hate, and not let it infect your attitude of
mind and, in a degree, your speech. Twenty or thirty years hence it may
prove altogether sufficient and satisfactory to know"--his lips worked,
obliging him to enunciate his w