ught to have held out--please say just what you
think--let us be quite frank and comradelike with each other--I can
write to Mr. Wrybolt."--

"Tell me plainly," said Dyce, leaning towards her. "What was your
reason for giving way at once? You really think, don't you, that it
will be better for the boy?"

"Oh, how _could_ I think so, Mr. Lashmar! You _know_ what a high
opinion--"

"Exactly. I am quite ready to believe all that. But you will be easier
in mind with Len at school, taught in the ordinary way? Now be
honest--make an effort."

"I--perhaps--one has to think of a boy's future--"

The pale face was suffused with rose, and for a moment looked pretty in
its half-tearful embarrassment.

"Good. That's all right. We'll talk no more of it."

There was a brief silence. Dyce gazed slowly about him. His eyes fell
on nothing of particular value, nothing at all unusual in the
drawing-room of a small house of middle-suburb type. There were
autotypes and etchings and photographs; there was good, comfortable
furniture; the piano stood for more than mere ornament, as Mrs.
Woolstan had some skill in music. Iris's widowhood was of five years'
duration. At two and twenty she had married a government-office clerk,
a man nearly twice her age, exasperated by routine and lack of
advancement; on her part it was a marriage of generosity; she did not
love the man, but was touched by his railing against fate, and fancied
she might be able to aid his ambitions. Woolstan talked of a possible
secretaryship under the chief of his department; he imagined himself
gifted for diplomacy, lacking only the chance to become a power in
statecraft. But when Iris had given herself and her six hundred a year,
she soon remarked a decline in her husband's aspiration. Presently
Woolstan began to complain of an ailment, the result of arduous labour
and of disillusion, which might make it imperative for him to retire
from the monotonous toil of the Civil Service; before long, he withdrew
to a pleasant cottage in Surrey, where he was to lead a studious life
and compose a great political work. The man had, in fact, an organic
disorder, which proved fatal to him before he could quite decide
whether to write his book on foolscap or on quarto paper. Mrs. Woolstan
devoted herself to her child, until, when Leonard was nine, she
entrusted him to a tutor very highly spoken of by friends of hers, a
young Oxford man, capable not only of instructing the boy in t