up the
mother--!" but Mrs. Ansell answered, with a slight grimace: "My dear
Henry, if you could see the house they live in you'd think I had been
providentially guided there!" and, reverting to the main issue, he went
on fretfully: "But why, after hearing the true version of the facts,
should Bessy still be influenced by that sensational scene? Even if it
was not, as Tredegar suspects, cooked up expressly to take her in, she
must see that the hospital doctor is, after all, as likely as any one to
know how the accident really happened, and how seriously the fellow is
hurt."

"There's the point. Why should Bessy believe Dr. Disbrow rather than Mr.
Amherst?"

"For the best of reasons--because Disbrow has nothing to gain by
distorting the facts, whereas this young Amherst, as Tredegar pointed
out, has the very obvious desire to give Truscomb a bad name and shove
himself into his place."

Mrs. Ansell contemplatively turned the rings upon her fingers. "From
what I saw of Amherst I'm inclined to think that, if that is his object,
he is too clever to have shown his hand so soon. But if you are right,
was there not all the more reason for letting Bessy see him and find out
as soon as possible what he was aiming at?"

"If one could have trusted her to find out--but you credit my poor child
with more penetration than I've ever seen in her."

"Perhaps you've looked for it at the wrong time--and about the wrong
things. Bessy has the penetration of the heart."

"The heart! You make mine jump when you use such expressions."

"Oh, I use this one in a general sense. But I want to help you to keep
it from acquiring a more restricted significance."

"Restricted--to the young man himself?"

Mrs. Ansell's expressive hands seemed to commit the question to fate.
"All I ask you to consider for the present is that Bessy is quite
unoccupied and excessively bored."

"Bored? Why, she has everything on earth she can want!"

"The ideal state for producing boredom--the only atmosphere in which it
really thrives. And besides--to be humanly inconsistent--there's just
one thing she hasn't got."

"Well?" Mr. Langhope groaned, fortifying himself with a second
cigarette.

"An occupation for that rudimentary little organ, the mention of which
makes you jump."

"There you go again! Good heavens, Maria, do you want to encourage her
to fall in love?"

"Not with a man, just at present, but with a hobby, an interest, by all
means. If she do