ll over now, no
matter when it began. He won't come here any more, unless I let him."
She could not help betraying her pride in this authority of hers, but
she went on anxiously enough, "What will you say to Irene? She's safe
as far as I'm concerned; but if he don't care for her, what will you
do?"

"I don't know what to do," said Mrs. Lapham. She sat in an apathy from
which she apparently could not rouse herself. "I don't see as anything
can be done."

Penelope laughed in a pitying derision.

"Well, let things go on then. But they won't go on."

"No, they won't go on," echoed her mother. "She's pretty enough, and
she's capable; and your father's got the money--I don't know what I'm
saying! She ain't equal to him, and she never was. I kept feeling it
all the time, and yet I kept blinding myself."

"If he had ever cared for her," said Penelope, "it wouldn't have
mattered whether she was equal to him or not. I'M not equal to him
either."

Her mother went on: "I might have thought it was you; but I had got
set----Well! I can see it all clear enough, now it's too late. I don't
know what to do."

"And what do you expect me to do?" demanded the girl. "Do you want ME
to go to Irene and tell her that I've got him away from her?"

"O good Lord!" cried Mrs. Lapham. "What shall I do? What do you want I
should do, Pen?"

"Nothing for me," said Penelope. "I've had it out with myself. Now do
the best you can for Irene."

"I couldn't say you had done wrong, if you was to marry him to-day."

"Mother!"

"No, I couldn't. I couldn't say but what you had been good and
faithfull all through, and you had a perfect right to do it. There
ain't any one to blame. He's behaved like a gentleman, and I can see
now that he never thought of her, and that it was you all the while.
Well, marry him, then! He's got the right, and so have you."

"What about Irene? I don't want you to talk about me. I can take care
of myself."

"She's nothing but a child. It's only a fancy with her. She'll get
over it. She hain't really got her heart set on him."

"She's got her heart set on him, mother. She's got her whole life set
on him. You know that."

"Yes, that's so," said the mother, as promptly as if she had been
arguing to that rather than the contrary effect.

"If I could give him to her, I would. But he isn't mine to give." She
added in a burst of despair, "He isn't mine to keep!"

"Well," said Mrs. Lapham, "she has