exts
that read quite like Socialism; I was looking them over with Adela on
Sunday. What a sad thing it is that you go so astray t It distresses me
more than you think. Indeed, if I may tell you such a thing, I pray for
you nightly.'

Mutimer made a movement of discomfort, but laughed off the subject.

'I'll go and see the vicar, at all events,' he said. 'But must your
coming depend on his?'

Mrs. Waltham hesitated.

'It really would make things easier.'

'Might I, in that case, hope that Miss Waltham would come?'

Richard seemed to exert himself to ask the question. Mrs. Waltham sank
her eyes, smiled feebly, and in the end shook her head.

'On a public occasion, I'm really afraid--'

'I'm sure she would like to know Mrs. Westlake,' urged Richard, without
his usual confidence. 'And if you and her brother--'

'If it were not a Socialist gathering.'

Richard uncrossed his legs and sat for a moment looking into the fire.
Then he turned suddenly.

'Mrs. Waltham, may I ask her myself?'

She was visibly agitated. There was this time no affectation in the
tremulous lips and the troublous, unsteady eyes. Mrs. Waltham was not by
nature the scheming mother who is indifferent to the upshot if she can
once get her daughter loyally bound to a man of money. Adela's
happiness was a very real care to her; she would never have opposed an
unobjectionable union on which she found her daughter's heart bent, but
circumstances had a second time made offer of brilliant advantages, and
she had grown to deem it an ordinance of the higher powers that Adela
should marry possessions. She flattered herself that her study of
Mutimer's character had been profound; the necessity of making such a
study excused, she thought, any little excess of familiarity in which
she had indulged, for it had long been clear to her that Mutimer would
some day make an offer. He lacked polish, it was true, but really he
was more a gentleman than a great many whose right to the name was never
contested. And then he had distinctly high aims: such a man could never
be brutal in the privacy of his home. There was every chance of his
achieving some kind of eminence; already she had suggested to him
a Parliamentary career, and the idea had not seemed altogether
distasteful. Adela herself was as yet far from regarding Mutimer in the
light of a future husband; it was perhaps true that she even disliked
him. But then a young girl's likes and dislikes have, as a rul