I reserve
judgment. If he's in love with that girl, and she with him--I can't make
out, however, that you have much reason to think it--but suppose he is,
she'll have the handling of him. Shan't we back her?"

He turned with vivacity to his hostess.

Victoria laughed indignantly.

"You may if you like. The odds are too doubtful for me."

"That's because you're Harry's mother!" he said with his sly, but most
winning, smile. "Well--there's the parable--writ large. _Mammon!_--how
you get it--how you use it--whether you dominate it--or it dominates
you. Whether it is the greater curse, or the greater blessing to men--it
was the question in Christ's day--it's the question now. But it has never
been put with such intensity, as to this generation! As to your
particular version of the parable--I wait to see! The tale's not through
yet."

XVIII

A few days later, Lady Tatham received a letter, which she opened with
some agitation. It was from Lydia in London:

"DEAR LADY TATHAM:

"I have waited some weeks before writing to you, partly because, as Susy
I hear has told you, I have been busy nursing my mother's sister, but
still more because my heart failed me--again and again.

"And yet I feel I ought to write--partly in justice to myself--partly to
ask you to forgive the pain I fear I may have caused you. I know--for he
has told me--that Lord Tatham never concealed from you all that has
passed between us; and so I feel sure that you know what happened about a
month ago, when we agreed that it would be wiser not to meet again for
the present.

"I don't exactly want to defend myself. It still seems to me true that,
in the future, men and women will find it much more possible to be
comrades and friends, without any thought of falling in love or marrying,
than they do now; and that it will be a good thing for both. And if it
is true, are not some of us justified in making experiments now? Lord
Tatham I know will have told you I was quite frank from the beginning. I
did not wish to marry; but I meant to be a very true friend; and I wanted
to be allowed to love you both, as one loves one's friends, and to share
your life a little. And the thing I most wished was that Lord Tatham
should marry--some one quite different from myself.

"So we agreed that we would write, and share each other's feelings and
thoughts as far as we could. And I hoped that any other idea with regard
to me would soon pass out of Lord Tatham's