swered steadily, "in leaving his wife
the unrestricted control of the property."

He had reddened under Mr. Langhope's thrust, but his voice betrayed no
irritation, and Bessy rewarded him with an unexpected beam of sympathy:
she was always up in arms at the least sign of his being treated as an
intruder.

"I am sure, papa," she said, a little tremulously, "that poor Richard,
though he knew I was not clever, felt he could trust me to take the best
advice----"

"Ah, that's all we ask of you, my child!" her father sighed, while Mr.
Tredegar drily interposed: "We are merely losing time by this
digression. Let me suggest that Amherst should give us an idea of the
changes he wishes to make at Westmore."

Amherst, as he turned to answer, remembered with what ardent faith in
his powers of persuasion he had responded to the same appeal three years
earlier. He had thought then that all his cause needed was a hearing;
now he knew that the practical man's readiness to let the idealist talk
corresponds with the busy parent's permission to destructive infancy to
"run out and play." They would let him state his case to the four
corners of the earth--if only he did not expect them to act on it! It
was their policy to let him exhaust himself in argument and exhortation,
to listen to him so politely and patiently that if he failed to enforce
his ideas it should not be for lack of opportunity to expound them....
And the alternative struck him as hardly less to be feared. Supposing
that the incredible happened, that his reasons prevailed with his wife,
and, through her, with the others--at what cost would the victory be
won? Would Bessy ever forgive him for winning it? And what would his
situation be, if it left him in control of Westmore but estranged from
his wife?

He recalled suddenly a phrase he had used that afternoon to the
dark-eyed girl at the garden-party: "What risks we run when we scramble
into the chariot of the gods!" And at the same instant he heard her
retort, and saw her fine gesture of defiance. How could he ever have
doubted that the thing was worth doing at whatever cost? Something in
him--some secret lurking element of weakness and evasion--shrank out of
sight in the light of her question: "Do _you_ act on that?" and the "God
forbid!" he had instantly flashed back to her. He turned to Mr. Tredegar
with his answer.

Amherst knew that any large theoretical exposition of the case would be
as much wasted on the two