h little pictures of Priscilla. No mother is happy while her
child's soul is in this state, and though he was extremely decent, and
hid it and smothered it and choked it with all the energy he
possessed, Lady Shuttleworth knew very well what was going on inside
him and spent her spare time trying to decide whether to laugh or to
cry over her poor Tussie. "When does Robin go back to Cambridge?" she
asked Mrs. Morrison the next time she met her, which was in the front
garden of a sick old woman's cottage.

Mrs. Morrison was going in with a leaflet; Lady Shuttleworth was going
in with a pound of tea. From this place they could see Priscilla's
cottage, and Robin was nailing up its creepers in the sight of all
Symford.

"Ah--I know what you mean," said Mrs. Morrison quickly.

"It is always such a pity to see emotions wasted," said Lady
Shuttleworth slowly, as if weighing each word.

"Wasted? You do think she's an adventuress, then?" said Mrs. Morrison
eagerly.

"Sh-sh. My dear, how could I think anything so unkind? But we who are
old"--Mrs. Morrison jerked up her chin--"and can look on calmly, do
see the pity of it when beautiful emotions are lavished and wasted. So
much force, so much time frittered away in dreams. And all so useless,
so barren. Nothing I think is so sad as waste, and nothing is so
wasteful as a one-sided love."

Mrs. Morrison gave the pink tulle bow she liked to wear in the
afternoons at her throat an agitated pat, and tried to conceal her
misery that Augustus Shuttleworth should also have succumbed to Miss
Neumann-Schultz. That he had done so was very clear from Lady
Shuttleworth's portentous remarks, for it was not in human nature for
a woman to be thus solemn about the wasted emotions of other people's
sons. His doing so might save Robin's future, but it would ruin
Netta's. We all have our little plans for the future--dear rosy things
that we dote on and hug to our bosoms with more tenderness even than
we hug the babies of our bodies, and the very rosiest and best
developed of Mrs. Morrison's darling plans was the marriage of her
daughter Netta with the rich young man Augustus. It was receiving a
rude knock on its hopeful little head at this moment in old Mrs.
Jones's front garden, and naturally the author of its being winced.
Augustus, she feared, must be extremely far gone in love, and it was
not likely that the girl would let such a chance go. It was a
consolation that the marriage would be a