had once done. His very
children, who should now be, as he told himself complainingly, his
greatest comfort, had degenerated from two sturdy, well-behaved little
boys and a charming baby girl into three unruly, fretful imps, setting
him at defiance, and terrorizing their two attendants, who, though
carefully chosen by their Aunt Maud, did not seem to manage them as well
as the old nurse who had been an ally of the ex-Mrs. Tapster.

Looking back at the whole horrible affair--for so, in his own mind, Mr.
Tapster justly designated the divorce case in which he had figured as
the successful petitioner--he wondered uneasily if he had done quite
wisely--wisely, that is, for his own repute and comfort.

He knew very well that had it not been for William, or rather, for Maud,
he would never have found out the dreadful truth. Nay, more, he was
dimly aware that but for them, and for their insistence on it as the
only proper course open to him, he would never have taken action. All
would have been forgiven and forgotten, had not William, and more
especially Maud, said he must divorce Flossy, if not for his own
sake,--ah, what irony!--then for that of his children.

Of course, he felt grateful to his brother William and to his brother's
wife for all they had done for him since that sad time. Still, in the
depths of his heart, Mr. Tapster felt entitled to blame and sometimes
almost to hate his kind brother and sister. To them both, or rather, to
Maud, he really owed the break-up of his life; for, when all was said
and done, it had to be admitted (though Maud did not like him to remind
her of it), that Flossy had met the villain while staying with the
William Tapsters at Boulogne. Respectable London people should have
known better than to take a furnished house at a disreputable French
watering-place, a place full of low English!

Sometimes it was only by a great exercise of self-control that he, James
Tapster, could refrain from telling Maud what he thought of her conduct
in this matter, the more so that she never seemed to understand how
greatly she--and William--had been to blame. On one occasion Maud had
even said how surprised she had been that James had cared to go away to
America, leaving his pretty young wife alone for as long as three
months. Why hadn't she said so at the time, then? Of course, he had
thought that he could leave Flossy to be looked after and kept out of
mischief by Maud and William. But he had been, in mo