olence and
disrespect on the part of her languid, soft-eyed daughter. She thought
with confidence that all would come right in the end, and vaguely she
determined that in some undefined way she would help Ethel, would yet
demonstrate to this child of hers that she understood and sympathised.
The interview which had just terminated, futile, conflicting, desultory,
muddled, tentative, and abrupt as life itself, appeared to her in the
light of a positive achievement. She was not unhappy about it, nor about
anything. Even the scathing speech of Florence Gardner had failed to
disturb her.

'I want to tell you something, Jack,' she began, when her husband at
length came home.

'Who's been drinking whisky?' was Stanway's only reply as he glanced at
the table.

'Harry brought the girls home. I dare say he had some. I didn't
notice,' she said.

'H'm!' Stanway muttered gloomily, 'he's young enough to start that
game.'

'I'll see it isn't offered to him again, if you like,' said Leonora.
'But I want to tell you something, Jack.'

'Well?' He was thoughtlessly cutting a piece of cheese into small
squares with the silver butter-knife.

'Only you must promise not to say a word to a soul.'

'I shall promise no such thing,' he said with uncompromising bluntness.

She smiled charmingly upon him. 'Oh yes, Jack, you will, you must.'

He seemed to be taken unawares by her sudden smile. 'Very well,' he said
gruffly.

She then told him, in the manner she thought best, of the relations
between Ethel and Fred Ryley, and she pointed out to him that, if he had
reflected at all upon the relations between Harry Burgess and Millicent,
he would not have fallen into the error of connecting Milly, instead of
her sister, with Fred.

'What relations between Milly and young Burgess?' he questioned
stolidly.

'Why, Jack,' she said, 'you know as much as I do. Why does Harry come
here so often?'

'He'd better not come here so often. What's Milly? She's nothing but a
child.'

Leonora made no attempt to argue with him. 'As for Ethel,' she said
softly, 'she's at a difficult age, and you must be careful----'

'As for Ethel,' he interrupted, 'I'll turn Fred Ryley out of my office
to-morrow.'

She tried to look grave and sympathetic, to use all her tact. 'But won't
that make difficulties with Uncle Meshach? And people might say you had
dismissed him because Uncle Meshach had altered his will.'

'D----n Fred Ryley!' he swore, unable to rep