re than one sense,
alas! bitterly deceived.

Still, it's never any use crying over spilt milk, so Mr. Tapster got up
from his chair and walked around the room, looking absently, as he did
so, at the large Landseer engravings, of which he was naturally proud.
If only he could forget, put out of his mind forever, the whole affair!
Well, perhaps with the Decree being made Absolute would come oblivion.

He sat down again before the fire. Staring at the hot embers, he
reminded himself that Flossy, wicked, ungrateful Flossy, had disappeared
out of his life. This being so, why think of her? The very children had
at last left off asking inconvenient questions about their mama.

By the way, would Flossy still be their mama after the Decree had been
made Absolute? So Mr. Tapster now suddenly asked himself. He hesitated,
perplexed. But, yes, the Decree being made Absolute would not undo, or
even efface, that fact. The more so--though surely here James Tapster
showed himself less logical than usual--the more so that Flossy, in
spite of what Maud had always said about her, had been a loving and, in
her own light-hearted way, a careful mother. But, though Flossy would
remain the mother of his children,--odd that the Law hadn't provided for
that contingency--she would soon be absolutely nothing, and less than
nothing, to him, the father of those children. Mr. Tapster was a great
believer in the infallibility of the Law, and he subscribed
whole-heartedly to the new reading, "What Law has put asunder, let no
man join together."

To-night Mr. Tapster could not help looking back with a certain
complacency to his one legal adventure. Nothing could have been better
done or more admirably conducted than the way the whole matter had been
carried through. His brother William, and William's solicitor, Mr.
Greenfield, had managed it all so very nicely. True, there had been a
few uncomfortable moments in the witness-box, but every one, including
the judge, had been most kind. As for his counsel, the leading man who
makes a specialty of these sad affairs, not even James Tapster himself
could have put his own case in a more delicate and moving fashion. "A
gentleman possessed of considerable fortune--" so had he justly been
described; and counsel, without undue insistence on irrelevant detail,
had drawn a touching and a true picture of Mr. Tapster's one romance,
his marriage eight years before to the twenty-year-old daughter of an
undischarged b