ned him!" came the hopeless wail.

Mrs. Delancy misunderstood the final pronoun, for the articulation of
the girl, clogged by feeling, was none too distinct.

"Pooh!" she ejaculated, cheerfully. "For my part, I think you're well
rid of them."

"But you don't understand," Cicily almost moaned. "It's him--him! I've
ruined him, I tell you."

This time, Mrs. Delancy understood the pronoun, but she understood
nothing beyond that.

"Ruined him?" she repeated, wholly at a loss. "Whom have you ruined,
Cicily? What do you mean?"

Then, the young wife poured forth the tale of the disaster she had all
unwittingly wrought in the affairs of her husband. She explained her
high hopes of saving a dangerous situation by means of her own influence
over the women, who, in turn, controlled the leaders among the workmen
in the factory. Cicily was painfully aware of the mischief that must
result from the refusal of the Civitas Society to welcome into its
sacred circle the three candidates whom she had proposed. She knew the
sensitiveness of these women, knew that they would bitterly resent the
slight thus put upon them. Where she had meant to bind their friendship
for her, she had succeeded only in creating a situation by which they
might well come to detest her for having subjected them to needless
humiliation. With their hostility aroused against her, they would throw
their influence, which she believed dominant, to persuade the men
against any concessions in favor of their employer. With a full
perception of the catastrophe in which she had so innocently become
involved, the wife hurriedly recounted the facts to her aunt, bewailing
the evil destiny that had worked such dire havoc with her schemes for
good.

"Well, you did what you could," Mrs. Delancy suggested consolingly, when
at last the melancholy recital was ended.

"And I failed!" came the retort, in a voice of misery.

Certain utterances of the girl on a former occasion had rankled in the
bosom of the old lady, perhaps because she perceived a certain element
of justice in them, and by so much a measure of dereliction on her own
part in the regulating of affairs between herself and her husband. Now,
despite the kindliness of her nature and her real sympathy for the
suffering of the niece who knelt at her knees, she could not forbear a
mild reproof:

"Well, Cicily," she said gently, "it all comes of a woman fooling with
business. Why, if you'd only been content to work f