invited Mr. Longdon himself to make the stride. "Well, you'll be a great
success."

"What do you mean by that?"

"Why, that we shall be so infatuated with you that we shall make your
life a burden to you. You'll see soon enough what I mean by it."

"Possibly," the old man said; "to understand you I shall have to. You
speak of something that as yet--with my race practically run--I know
nothing about. I was no success as a young man. I mean of the sort that
would have made most difference. People wouldn't look at me--"

"Well, WE shall look at you," Vanderbank declared. Then he added: "What
people do you mean?" And before his friend could reply: "Lady Julia?"

Mr. Longdon's assent was mute. "Ah she was not the worst! I mean that
what made it so bad," he continued, "was that they all really liked
me. Your mother, I think--as to THAT, the dreadful consolatory
'liking'--even more than the others."

"My mother?"--Vanderbank was surprised. "You mean there was a
question--?"

"Oh for but half a minute! It didn't take her long. It was five years
after your father's death."

This explanation was very delicately made. "She COULD marry again."

"And I suppose you know she did," Vanderbank returned.

"I knew it soon enough!" With this, abruptly, Mr. Longdon pulled himself
forward. "Good-night, good-night."

"Good-night," said Vanderbank. "But wasn't that AFTER Lady Julia?"

On the edge of the sofa, his hands supporting him, Mr. Longdon looked
straight. "There was nothing after Lady Julia."

"I see." His companion smiled. "My mother was earlier."

"She was extremely good to me. I'm not speaking of that time at
Malvern--that came later."

"Precisely--I understand. You're speaking of the first years of her
widowhood."

Mr. Longdon just faltered. "I should call them rather the last. Six
months later came her second marriage."

Vanderbank's interest visibly improved. "Ah it was THEN? That was about
my seventh year." He called things back and pieced them together. "But
she must have been older than you."

"Yes--a little. She was kindness itself to me at all events, then and
afterwards. That was the charm of the weeks at Malvern."

"I see," the young man laughed. "The charm was that you had recovered."

"Oh dear, no!" Mr. Longdon, rather to his mystification, exclaimed. "I'm
afraid I hadn't recovered at all--hadn't, if that's what you mean, got
over my misery and my melancholy. She knew I hadn't--and that was what