e time of the Pharaohs the Morning
Papyrus used to serve up this kind of thing"--and then, as the nervous
tension of his hearer expressed itself in an abrupt movement, he added,
handing back the clipping with a smile: "What do you propose to do? Kill
the editor, and forbid Blanche and Bowfort the house?"

"I mean to do something," Amherst began, suddenly chilled by the
realization that his wrath had not yet shaped itself into a definite
plan of action.

"Well, it must be that or nothing," said Mr. Langhope, drawing his stick
meditatively across his knee. "And, of course, if it's _that_, you'll
land Bessy in a devil of a mess."

Without giving his son-in-law time to protest, he touched rapidly but
vividly on the inutility and embarrassment of libel suits, and on the
devices whereby the legal means of vindication from such attacks may be
turned against those who have recourse to them; and Amherst listened
with a sickened sense of the incompatibility between abstract standards
of honour and their practical application.

"What should you do, then?" he murmured, as Mr. Langhope ended with his
light shrug and a "See Tredegar, if you don't believe me"--; and his
father-in-law replied with an evasive gesture: "Why, leave the
responsibility where it belongs!"

"Where it belongs?"

"To Fenton Carbury, of course. Luckily it's nobody's business but his,
and if he doesn't mind what is said about his wife I don't see how you
can take up the cudgels for her without casting another shade on her
somewhat chequered reputation."

Amherst stared. "His wife? What do I care what's said of her? I'm
thinking of mine!"

"Well, if Carbury has no objection to his wife's meeting Bowfort, I
don't see how you can object to her meeting him at your house. In such
matters, as you know, it has mercifully been decided that the husband's
attitude shall determine other people's; otherwise we should be deprived
of the legitimate pleasure of slandering our neighbours." Mr. Langhope
was always careful to temper his explanations with an "as you know": he
would have thought it ill-bred to omit this parenthesis in elucidating
the social code to his son-in-law.

"Then you mean that I can do nothing?" Amherst exclaimed.

Mr. Langhope smiled. "What applies to Carbury applies to you--by doing
nothing you establish the fact that there's nothing to do; just as you
create the difficulty by recognizing it." And he added, as Amherst sat
silent: "Take Bessy a