naby understand how it is in town."

"Yes," said Beaton. He stirred his tea, while inwardly he tried to
believe that he had really discouraged the Leightons from coming to New
York. Perhaps the vexation of his failure made him call Mrs. Horn in his
heart a fraud.

"Yes," she went on, "it is very, very hard. And when they won't
understand, and rush on their doom, you feel that they are going to hold
you respons--"

Mrs. Horn's eyes wandered from Beaton; her voice faltered in the faded
interest of her remark, and then rose with renewed vigor in greeting a
lady who came up and stretched her glove across the tea-cups.

Beaton got himself away and out of the house with a much briefer adieu
to the niece than he had meant to make. The patronizing compassion of
Mrs. Horn for the Leightons filled him with indignation toward her,
toward himself. There was no reason why he should not have ignored
them as he had done; but there was a feeling. It was his nature to
be careless, and he had been spoiled into recklessness; he neglected
everybody, and only remembered them when it suited his whim or his
convenience; but he fiercely resented the inattentions of others toward
himself. He had no scruple about breaking an engagement or failing
to keep an appointment; he made promises without thinking of their
fulfilment, and not because he was a faithless person, but because he
was imaginative, and expected at the time to do what he said, but was
fickle, and so did not. As most of his shortcomings were of a society
sort, no great harm was done to anybody else. He had contracted somewhat
the circle of his acquaintance by what some people called his rudeness,
but most people treated it as his oddity, and were patient with it. One
lady said she valued his coming when he said he would come because it
had the charm of the unexpected. "Only it shows that it isn't always the
unexpected that happens," she explained.

It did not occur to him that his behavior was immoral; he did not
realize that it was creating a reputation if not a character for him.
While we are still young we do not realize that our actions have this
effect. It seems to us that people will judge us from what we think and
feel. Later we find out that this is impossible; perhaps we find it out
too late; some of us never find it out at all.

In spite of his shame about the Leightons, Beaton had no present
intention of looking them up or sending Mrs. Horn their address. As
a mat