to get her out of her clutches!' ... I think," Henry
Houghton interrupted himself, "that's one explanation of Maurice:
rescuing a forlorn damsel. Well, I was perfectly direct with him; I
said, 'My dear fellow, Mrs. Newbolt is not a hell-cat; and the elopement
was in bad taste. Elopements are always in bad taste. But the elopement
is the least important part of it. The difference in age is the serious
thing.' I got it out of him just what it is--almost twenty years. She
might be his mother!--he admitted that he had had to lie about himself
to get the license. I said, '_Your_ age is the dangerous thing, Maurice,
not hers; and it's up to you to keep steady!' Of course he didn't
believe me," said Mr. Houghton, sighing. "He's in love all right, poor
infant! The next thing is for me to find a job for him.... She is good
looking, Mary?" She nodded, and he said again, "A pre-Raphaelite woman;
those full red lips, and that lovely black hair growing so low on her
forehead. And a really good voice. And a charming figure. But I tell you
one thing: she's got to stop twitting on facts. Did you hear her say,
'Maurice is so ridiculously young, he doesn't remember'--? I don't know
what it was he didn't remember. Something unimportant. But she must not
put ideas about his youth into his head. He'll know it soon enough!
_You_ tell her that."

"Thank you so much!" said Mary Houghton. "Henry, you mustn't say things
before Edith! Suppose Eleanor had known her _Little Dorrit_?"

"She doesn't know anything; and she has nothing to say."

"Well, it might be worse," she encouraged him. "Suppose she were
talkative?"

He nodded: "Yes; a dull woman is bad, and a talkative woman is bad; but
a dull talkative woman is hell."

"My _dear_! I'm glad Edith's in bed. Well, I think I like her."

CHAPTER VI

But the time arrived when Mrs. Houghton was certain that she "liked"
Maurice's wife. It would have come sooner if Eleanor's real sweetness
had not been hidden by her tiresome timidity ... a thunderstorm sent
her, blanched and panting, to sit huddled on her bed, shutters closed,
shades drawn; she schemed not to go upstairs by herself in the dark; she
was preoccupied when old Lion took them off on a slow, jogging drive,
for fear of a runaway.

Everybody was aware of her nervousness. Until it bored him, Henry
Houghton was touched by it;--probably there is no man who is so
intelligent that the Clinging Vine makes no appeal to him. Mrs. Hought