that if Northwick ever did make up his mind to go back, he
could not find a more interested and attentive travelling-companion.
Northwick seemed to take the right view of the matter, the business
view, and Pinney thought he had arranged a difficult point with great
tact; but he modestly concealed his success from his wife. They both
took leave of the exile with affection; and Mrs. Pinney put her arms
round his neck and kissed him; he promised her that he would take good
care of himself in her absence. Pinney put a business address in his
hand at the last moment.

Northwick seemed to have got back something of his moral force after
these people, who had so strangely become his friends, left him to his
own resources. Once more he began to dream of employing the money he had
with him for making more, and paying back the Ponkwasset company's
forced loans. He positively forbade Suzette's coming to him, as she
proposed, after Adeline's funeral. He telegraphed to prevent her
undertaking the journey, and he wrote, saying he wished to be alone for
a while, and to decide for himself the question of his fate. He approved
of Matt's wish that they should be married at once, and he replied to
Matt with a letter decently observant of the peculiar circumstances,
recognizing the reluctance his father and mother might well feel, and
expressing the hope that he was acting with their full and free consent.
If this letter could have been produced in court, it would have told
heavily against Putney's theory of a defence on the ground of insanity,
it was so clear, and just, and reasonable; though perhaps an expert
might have recognized a mental obliquity in its affirmation of
Northwick's belief that Matt's father would yet come to see his conduct
in its true light, and to regard him as the victim of circumstances
which he really was.

Among the friends of the Hilarys there was misgiving on this point of
their approval of Matt's marriage. Some of them thought that the
parents' hands had been forced in the blessing they gave it. Old
Bromfield Corey expressed a general feeling to Hilary with senile
frankness. "Hilary, you seem to have disappointed the expectation of the
admirers of your iron firmness. I tell 'em that's what you keep for your
enemies. But they seem to think that in Matt's case you ought to have
been more of a Roman father."

"I'm just going to become one," said Hilary, with the good temper proper
to that moment of the dinner.