her
sister in the drawing-room of Melkbridge House. Mrs Devitt was trying
to fix her mind on an article in one of the monthly reviews dealing
with the voluntary limitation of families on the part of married folk.
Mrs Devitt could not give her usual stolid attention to her reading,
because, now and again, her thoughts wandered to an interview between
her husband and Lowther which was taking place in the library
downstairs. This private talk between father and son was on the subject
of certain snares which beset the feet of moneyed youth when in London,
and in which the unhappy Lowther had been caught. Mrs Devitt was
sufficiently vexed at the prospect of her husband having to fork out
some hundreds of pounds, without the further promise of revelations in
which light-hearted, lighter living young women were concerned. Debts
were forgivable, perhaps excusable, in a young gentleman of Lowther's
standing, but immorality, in Mrs Devitt's eyes, was a horse of quite
another colour; anything of this nature acted upon Mrs Devitt's
susceptibilities much in the same way as seeing red afreets an angry
bull.

Miss Spraggs, whom the last eighteen months had aged in appearance,
looked up from the rough draft of a letter she was composing.

"Did you hear anything?" she asked, as she listened intently.

"Hear what?"

"The door open downstairs. Lowther's been in such a time with Montague."

"I suppose Lowther is confessing everything," sighed Mrs Devitt.

"Nothing of the sort," remarked Miss Spraggs.

"What do you mean?"

"No one ever does confess everything: something is always kept back."

"Don't you think, Eva, you look at things from a very material point of
view?"

Eva shrugged her narrow shoulders. Mrs Devitt continued:

"Now and again, you seem to ignore the good which is implanted in us
all."

"Perhaps because it's buried so deep down that it's difficult to see."

Half an hour afterwards, it occurred to Mrs Devitt that she might have
retorted, "What one saw depended on the power of one's perceptions,"
but just now, all she could think of to say was:

"Quite so; but there's so much good in the world, I wonder you don't
see more of it."

"What are you reading?" asked Miss Spraggs, as she revised the draft of
her letter.

The scribbling virgin often made a point of talking while writing, in
order to show how little mental concentration was required for her
literary efforts.

"An article on voluntary limitations