rs. Eveleth. I see now what you've been up to," he
added, with a shrill, nervous laugh. "You've been turning me round your
little finger, and I'm hanged if you haven't done it very cleverly.
You've failed in this one point, however, that you haven't done it quite
cleverly enough. I stay."

"Very well; but you won't refuse to let me stay too--for the reasons
that I gave you at first."

"You're wily, I must say! If you can't get best, you're willing to take
second best. Isn't that it?"

"That's it exactly. I did hope that no marriage would take place between
Dorothea and you to-night. I hoped that, before you came to that, you'd
realize to what a degree you're taking advantage of her wilfulness and
her love for you--for it's a mixture of both--to put her in a false
position, from which she'll never wholly free herself as long as she
lives. I hoped you'd be man enough to go back and win her from her
father by open means. Failing all that, I hoped you'd let me blunt the
keenest edge of your folly by giving to your marriage the countenance
which my presence at it could bestow. Was there any harm in that? Was
there anything for you to resent, or for me to be ashamed of? Is a good
thing less good because I wish it, or a wise thought less wise because I
think it? You talk of turning you round my little finger, as though it
was something at which you had to take offence. My dear boy, that only
shows how young you are. Every good woman, if I may call myself one,
turns the men she cares for round her little finger, and it's the men
who are worth most in life who submit most readily to the process. When
you're a little older, when, perhaps, you have children of your own,
you'll understand better what I've done for you to-night; and you won't
use toward my memory the tone of semi-jocular disdain that has entered
into nearly every word you've addressed to me this evening. Now, if
you'll excuse me," she added, wearily, "I think I'll go in. I'm very
tired, and I'll rest till Dorothea comes. When she arrives you must
bring her to me directly; and she must stay with me till I take her
to--the wedding. My room is the first door on the left of the main
entrance."

She was half-way across the terrace when he called out to her, the
boyish tremor in his voice more accentuated than before.

"Wait a minute. There's lots of time." She came back a few paces toward
him. "Shouldn't I look very grotesque if I hooked it?"

"Not half so grotesq