r and what will
she be able to do for herself? She's at the age when the whole
thing--speaking of her 'attractions,' her possible share of good
looks--is still to a degree in a fog. But everything depends on it."

Mr. Longdon had by this time come back to him. "Excuse my asking
it again--for you take such jumps: what, once more, do you mean by
everything?"

"Why naturally her marrying. Above all her marrying early."

Mr. Longdon stood before the sofa. "What do you mean by early?"

"Well, we do doubtless get up later than at Beccles; but that gives
us, you see, shorter days. I mean in a couple of seasons. Soon enough,"
Vanderbank developed, "to limit the strain--!" He was moved to higher
gaiety by his friend's expression.

"What do you mean by the strain?"

"Well, the complication of her being there."

"Being where?"

"You do put one through!" Vanderbank laughed. But he showed himself
perfectly prepared. "Out of the school-room and where she is now. In her
mother's drawing-room. At her mother's fireside."

Mr. Longdon stared. "But where else should she be?"

"At her husband's, don't you see?"

He looked as if he quite saw, yet was nevertheless not to be put off
from his original challenge. "Ah certainly; but not as if she had been
pushed down the chimney. All in good time."

"What do you call good time?"

"Why time to make herself loved."

Vanderbank wondered. "By the men who come to the house?"

Mr. Longdon slightly attenuated this way of putting it. "Yes--and in the
home circle. Where's the 'strain' of her being suffered to be a member
of it?"

III

Vanderbank at this left his corner of the sofa and, with his hands
in his pockets and a manner so amused that it might have passed for
excited, took several paces about the room while his interlocutor,
watching him, waited for his response. That gentleman, as this response
for a minute hung fire, took his turn at sitting down, and then
Vanderbank stopped before him with a face in which something had been
still more brightly kindled. "You ask me more things than I can tell
you. You ask me more than I think you suspect. You must come and see me
again--you must let me come and see you. You raise the most interesting
questions and we must sooner or later have them all out."

Mr. Longdon looked happy in such a prospect, but once more took out his
watch. "It wants five minutes to midnight. Which means that I must go
now."

"Not in the least. There ar