f them; they had been very good to me.

"Dear Miss Beltoni," I answered, "I am going to take warning by you
both."

She pressed my hand. "Oh, do, please do," she murmured. "We really have
been miserable--now and then."

"I am never going to be content," I assured her, "until I find a lady
as charming and as amiable as you, and if ever I get her I'll take good
care never to run any risk of losing her."

It sounded well and pleased us all. The O'Kelly shook me warmly by the
hand, and this time spoke his real feelings.

"Me boy," he said, "all women are good--for somebody. But the woman that
is good for yerself is better for ye than a better woman who's the best
for somebody else. Ye understand?"

I said I did.

At eight o'clock precisely Mrs. Peedles arrived--as Flora MacDonald, in
green velvet jacket and twelve to fifteen inches of plaid stocking. As
a topic fitting the occasion we discussed the absent Mr. Peedles and the
subject of deserted wives in general.

"A fine-looking man," allowed Mrs. Peedles, "but weak--weak as water."

The Signora agreed that unfortunately there did exist such men: 'twas
pitiful but true.

"My dear," continued Mrs. Peedles, "she wasn't even a lady."

The Signora expressed astonishment at the deterioration in Mr. Peedles'
taste thus implied.

"I won't go so far as to say we never had a difference," continued Mrs.
Peedles, whose object appeared to be an impartial statement of the whole
case. "There may have been incompatability of temperament, as they say.
Myself, I have always been of a playful disposition--frivolous, some
might call me."

The Signora protested; the O'Kelly declined to listen to such aspersion
on her character even from Mrs. Peedles herself.

Mrs. Peedles, thus corrected, allowed that maybe frivolous was too
sweeping an accusation: say sportive.

"But a good wife to him I always was," asserted Mrs. Peedles, with a
fine sense of justice; "never flighty, like some of them. I challenge
any one to accuse me of having been flighty."

We felt we should not believe any one who did, and told her so.

Mrs. Peedles, drawing her chair closer to the Signora, assumed a
confidential attitude. "If they want to go, let 'em go, I always say,"
she whispered loudly into the Signora's ear. "Ten to one they'll find
they've only jumped out of the frying-pan into the fire. One can always
comfort oneself with that."

There seemed to be confusion in the mind of Mrs. Peedles. Her