ound? There'd be no nonsense about Harriet,
you could count on that."

"It would be like Rose," said John, "to tell him herself. It wouldn't be
like her, when you come to think of it, to do anything else."

"Oh, yes, she'd tell him," said Violet. "If she had some virtuous
woman-suffrage reason, she'd do more than tell him. She'd rub it in. Of
course he knows. Well, what shall we do about that?"

"Same vote," said John Williamson; "shut up. Certainly if he knows, that
lets us out."

But Violet wasn't satisfied. "That's the easiest thing, certainly," she
said, "but I don't believe it's right. I think the people who know him
best, ought to know--just a few, the people he still drops in on, like
the Crawfords, and the Wests, and Eleanor and James Randolph; just so
that they could--well, _not_ know completely enough; so that they
wouldn't, innocently, you know, say ghastly things to him. Or even,
perhaps, do them, like making him go to musical shows, or talking about
people who run away to go on the stage. There are millions of things
like that that could happen, and if they know, they'll be careful."

Her husband wasn't very completely convinced, though she expounded her
reasons at length, and urged them with growing intensity. But he'd never
put a categorical veto upon her yet, and it wasn't likely he'd begin by
trying to, now.

As for Jimmy Wallace, he was really out of it. But he went home feeling
rather blue.

CHAPTER XI

THE SHORT CIRCUIT AGAIN

It was, after all, out of that limbo that Jimmy had spoken of as the
margin of the unforeseeable, that the blind instrument of Fate appeared.
He was a country lawyer from down-state, who, for a client of his own,
had retained Rodney to defend a will that presented complexities in the
matter of perpetuities and contingent remainders utterly beyond his own
powers. He'd been in Chicago three or four days, spending an hour or two
of every day in Rodney's office in consultation with him, and, for the
rest of the time, dangling about, more or less at a loose end. A belated
sense of this struck Rodney when, at the end of their last consultation,
the country lawyer shook hands with him and announced his departure for
home on the five o'clock train.

"I'm sorry I haven't been able to do more," Rodney said,--"do anything
really, in the way of showing you a good time. As a matter of fact, I've
spent every evening this week here in the office."

"Oh, I haven't lacked