-moving elder.

Then suddenly something that the troubled little woman was saying fixed
her attention, pulling up her wandering thoughts with a jerk.

"--and the Doctor asked me, my dear, to treat it quite
confidentially, except to bother Cyrus. But, I'm sure he would wish you
to know. Of course it is a delicate matter--I can readily understand, as
he says, how the public would misconstrue the Doctor's words and apply
them generally--forgetting that each case requires a different point of
view. But with Harold it is really a perfectly flagrant and dreadful
case of mismating--due entirely to the poor boy's thoughtless
chivalry--barely twenty-eight, mind you--as if a man nowadays knows his
mind at all well before thirty-five. Of course, divorce is an evil that,
broadly speaking, threatens the sanctity of our home life--no one
understands that better than your husband--and re-marriage after divorce
is usually an outrageous scandal--one, indeed, altogether too
common--sometimes I wonder what we're coming to, it seems to be done so
thoughtlessly--but individual instances are different--'exceptions prove
the rule,' you know, as the old saying goes. Now Harold is ready to
settle down, and the girl is of excellent family and all that--quite the
social and moral brace he needs, in fact."

Nancy was attentive, yet a little puzzled.

"But--you speak of your son, Harold--is he not already married?"

"That's it, my dear. You know what a funny, bright, mischievous boy
Harold is--even a little deliciously wild at times--doubtless you read
of his marriage when it occurred--how these newspapers do relish
anything of the sort--she was a theatrical young woman--what they call a
'show girl,' I believe. Humph!--with reason, I _must_ say! Of all the
egregious and inveterate showiness! My dear, she is positively a
creature! Oh, if they'd only invent a monocle that would let a young man
pierce the glamour of the footlights. I pledge you my word, she's--but
never mind that! Harold was a thoughtless, restless boy--not bad, you
know, but heedless. Why, he was quite the same about business. He began
to speculate, and of course, being brother Cyrus's nephew, his advantage
was considerable. But he suddenly declared he wouldn't be a broker any
more--and you'd never guess his absurd reason: simply because some stock
he held or didn't hold went up or down or something on a rumour in the
street that Mr. Russell Sage was extremely ill! He said that t