g Walter's return.

There was sympathy between Mrs. Clinton and her daughter-in-law, who
recognised her fine qualities and loved her for them, privately thinking
that she was a woman ill-used by fate and her husband. Mrs. Graham
thought so too, but she and Mrs. Clinton had little in common, and in
spite of mutual esteem, could hardly be called friends. But the tie
which had bound Muriel to Kencote all her life had depended almost as
much upon Mrs. Clinton as upon Cicely, and until the last few months
more than it had upon Walter. They could talk together knowing that each
would understand the other, and Muriel's downrightness did not offend
Mrs. Clinton.

She plunged now into the middle of things. "You know it is Jim I am
thinking of, Mrs. Clinton," she said, "now that this extraordinary
business is over. I want to know where Jim comes in."

"I am afraid, my dear," said Mrs. Clinton, with a smile, "that poor Jim
has come in very little."

"Did you know," asked Muriel, "that Jim was head over ears in love with
Cicely, or did you think, like everybody else, that he was slack about
it?"

Mrs. Clinton thought for a moment. "I have never thought of him as head
over ears in love with Cicely," she said.

"And I didn't either, till Walter told me. But he is. He behaved like a
brick to-day. Dick told Walter. And Cicely told me too. It was Jim who
got her away from that man--the horrible creature! How can a man be such
a brute, Mrs. Clinton?"

"I don't want to talk about him, Muriel," said Mrs. Clinton quietly. "He
has come into our life and he has gone out again. I hope we shall never
see him again."

"If I ever see him," said Muriel, "nothing shall prevent my telling him
what I think of him. How Cicely could! Poor darling, she doesn't know
how she could herself, now. She told me that she saw him as he was
beside Jim and Dick. He isn't a gentleman, for all the great things he
has done, and somehow that little fact seemed to have escaped her until
then. Don't you think it is rather odd that it matters so tremendously
to women like us whether the men we live with are gentlemen or not, and
yet we are so liable at first to make mistakes about them?"

Mrs. Clinton was not quite equal to the discussion of a general
question. "It would matter to any one brought up as Cicely has been,"
she said, "or you. Can you tell me exactly what you mean when you say
that Jim is head over ears in love with Cicely? I don't think he has
sh