rather shy with her. He had difficulty,
sometimes, after her long absence at school and camp, in realizing her
as the little girl who had once begged for his neckties to make into
doll frocks.

Once she said:

"Could you love a person you didn't entirely respect, father?"

"Love is founded on respect, Lily."

She pondered that. She felt that he was wrong.

"But it does happen, doesn't it?" she had persisted.

He had been accustomed to her searchings for interesting abstractions
for years. She used to talk about religion in the same way. So he smiled
and said:

"There is a sort of infatuation that is based on something quite
different."

"On what?"

But he had rather floundered there. He could not discuss physical
attraction with her.

"We're getting rather deep for eleven o'clock at night, aren't we?"

After a short silence:

"Do you mind speaking about Aunt Elinor, father?"

"No, dear. Although it is rather a painful subject."

"But if she is happy, why is it painful?"

"Well, because Doyle is the sort of man he is."

"You mean--because he is unfaithful to her? Or was?"

He was very uncomfortable.

"That is one reason for it, of course. There are others."

"But if he is faithful to her now, father? Don't you think, whatever a
man has been, if he really cares for a woman it makes him over?"

"Sometimes, not always." The subject was painful to him. He did not want
his daughter to know the sordid things of life. But he added, gallantly:
"Of course a good woman can do almost anything she wants with a man, if
he cares for her."

She lay awake almost all night, thinking that over.

On the Sunday following Louis Akers' call Mademoiselle learned of it, by
the devious route of the servants' hall, and she went to Lily at once,
yearning and anxious, and in her best lace collar. She needed courage,
and to be dressed in her best gave her moral strength.

"It is not," she said, "that they wish to curtail your liberty, Lily.
But to have that man come here, when he knows he is not wanted, to force
himself on you--"

"I need not have seen him. I wanted to see him."

Mademoiselle waved her hands despairingly.

"If they find it out!" she wailed.

"They will. I intend to tell them."

But Mademoiselle made her error there. She was fearful of Grace's
attitude unless she forewarned her, and Grace, frightened, immediately
made it a matter of a family conclave. She had not intended to include
Anthony, but