definitions. “You say that Niel is ready to set me free. I took that for granted, of course. It’s only common decency. But that’s hardly what father could have meant in imploring me to come to—you. He told me nothing—only implored, and lamented. And, since I am here, I’d like some information, I confess.”

It was the first step away from pride, and it was a long one. And Mrs. Delafield knew that with it came her own final turning-point. Here, at this moment, she must be true to Tim and Niel, or betray their trust. And here no less—for so it seemed to her—she might, in betraying them, take the law into her own hands and promise herself, and them, that, in breaking it, she would make something better. Yet she did not feel these alternatives, now, at war within her mind. She knew that they were there, implicit, but she knew them already answered. Rhoda had answered for her; and Jane Amoret had answered. It took her, however, a moment to find her own answer, the verbal one, and while she looked for it, she kept her eyes on the fire.

“Your father wants you to go back,” she said at last. “Niel is willing to take you back. That is the information I had for you. Not for a moment because he would accept your interpretation of responsibility, and not for a moment because of any personal feeling for you; which must be a relief to you. Merely for your sake, and the child’s. But I don’t know how to plead such a cause with you, Rhoda. I understand you, I think, better than your father does. I’ve always seen your point of view as he could never see it, and I see it even now. So that I should feel that I asked you something outrageous in asking you to go back to your husband when you love another man. If you should want to go back, that would be a very different matter—if, by chance, you feel you’ve made a mistake and are tired, already, of Mr. Darley.”

She had time, in the pause that followed, the scales pulsing almost evenly—it was as if she saw them—between Rhoda’s pride and Rhoda’s urgency, to wonder at herself. And most of all to wonder that she regretted nothing. She kept her eyes on the fire, but she knew that Rhoda, very still, scrutinized her intently. The sharply drawn tension of the moment had resolved itself, to her imagination, into a series of tiny ticks, as if of the scales settling down to the choice, before Rhoda spoke. Then what she found to say was, “That’s hardly likely, is it?”

“I felt it impossible, you will be glad to hear,” said Mrs. Delafield. “No one who understands you could suspect you, whatever your faults, of two infidelities in the space of a fortnight.”

And now again there was a long silence, broken only by the lapping of the flames up the chimney and the soft movements of Jane Amoret among her blocks.

Rhoda turned away at last, facing the fire and looking down at it, her hands on the edge of the mantelpiece, her foot on the fender; and she presently lifted the foot and dealt the logs a kick.

It was all clear to Mrs. Delafield. She was tired of her poet, or, at all events, did not, in the new life, find compensations enough. She had come, hoping to have her way made clear for a reëntry, dignified, if not triumphant, into the old life. And here she was, in her corner, her head fairly fixed to the wall.

Meanwhile, what had become of the mid-Victorian conscience? What had, indeed, become of any conscience at all, since she continued to regret nothing? She even found excuses, perfidious, no doubt, yet satisfactory. It had been the truth she had given Rhoda—the real truth, her own, if not the truth she owed her, not the truth as Tim and Niel had placed it, all confidently, in her hands. But since it was preëminently not the truth that Rhoda had come to seize, she was willing, now that she had fixed her so firmly, to give her something else, and she really rejoiced to find it ready, going on presently and with a note of relief that Rhoda’s ear could not fail to catch:—

“Not only from the point of view of dignity one couldn’t suspect it of you, Rhoda, but—I want to say it to you, having had my glimpse of Mr. Darley—from the point of view of taste. If you were going to do anything of this sort,—and I don’t need to tell you how deeply I deplore it nor how wrong I think you,—but if you were going to do it, you couldn’t have chosen better. He is gifted; he is charming; he is good. I saw it all at once.”

There was her further truth, and really it was due to Rhoda. Rhoda, at this, faced her again and, highly civilized creature that she was, it was with her genuine grim mirth.

“Upon my word, Aunt Isabel!” she commented. “You are astonishing.”

“Am I? Why?” asked Mrs. Delafield, though she knew quite well.

“Why, my dear? Because you are over sixty years old and you wear caps. I expected to find dismay, reproach, and lamentations—all the strains of poor old father’s harmonium; to have you down on your knees begging me to return to the paths of virtue. And here you are, cool and unperturbed and, positively, patting us on the back; positively giving us your blessing. Well, well, wonders will never cease! Yes, he is charming, no one can deny that; and good and gifted, too. But to think of your having spotted it so quickly! Why, you only saw him once, if I remember, and I don’t remember that you talked at all.”

“We didn’t. I only saw him once.”

“And it was enough! To make you understand! To make you condone!—Come, out with it, Aunt Isabel, you wicked old lady! I see now why I’ve always got on so well with you. You are wicked.”

“To make me understand. I won’t say condone.”

“You needn’t say it. You’ve said enough. And certainly it is a feather in Christopher’s cap. But he is the sort of person one falls in love with at first sight.”

“So I see.”

“And so do I,” said Rhoda, still laughing. But her slightly avenging gaiety dropped from her after the last sally, and turning again to the fire, and again kicking her log, she said, almost sombrely, “He absolutely worships me.”

Was not this everybody’s justification? Mrs. Delafield seized it, rising, as on a satisfying close.

“Will you stay to lunch?” she asked.

“Dear me, no!” Rhoda laughed. “I must get back to Christopher. And the motor is there waiting. So you’ll write to father and tell him that I came here and that you advised me to stick to Christopher.”

"Advised? Have I seemed to advise, Rhoda? Do you mean"—it was, Mrs. Delafield knew, the final peril—“that you had considered not sticking to him?”

Rhoda continued to laugh a little, drawing up her furs.

“Rather not! It couldn’t have entered my head, could it, either from the point of view of dignity or of taste—as you’ve been telling me? You have been very wonderful, you know! Tell father, then, if you like, that you gave us your blessing.”

“I’ll tell him,” said Mrs. Delafield, “that I’m convinced you ought not to go back to Niel.”

"I see,"—Rhoda nodded, and their eyes sounded each other, curiously,—“though father thinks I ought.”

“Of course. That’s why you’re here.”

“Father would have gone down on his knees to beg me.”

“Yes. Down on his knees. Poor Tim!”

She was horribly frightened, but she faced Rhoda’s grim mirth deliberate with gravity. And Rhoda, whatever she might have seen or guessed, accepted her defeat; accepted the dignity and taste thrust upon her. “Father, in other words, isn’t a wicked old gentleman as you are a wicked old lady. I see it all, and it’s all a feather in Christopher’s cap. Well, Aunt Isabel, good-bye. Shall I see you again? Will you come and call when I’m Mrs. Darley? I don’t see how, with a clear conscience, you can chuck us, you know.”

“Nor do I,” Mrs. Delafield