nd over in his hand and waited.

"Did you suppose," she asked at last, "that that young Corey had been
coming to see Irene?"

"I don't know what I supposed," replied Lapham sullenly. "You always
said so." He looked sharply at her under his lowering brows.

"Well, he hasn't," said Mrs. Lapham; and she replied to the frown that
blackened on her husband's face. "And I can tell you what, if you take
it in that way I shan't speak another word."

"Who's takin' it what way?" retorted Lapham savagely. "What are you
drivin' at?"

"I want you should promise that you'll hear me out quietly."

"I'll hear you out if you'll give me a chance. I haven't said a word
yet."

"Well, I'm not going to have you flying into forty furies, and looking
like a perfect thunder-cloud at the very start. I've had to bear it,
and you've got to bear it too."

"Well, let me have a chance at it, then."

"It's nothing to blame anybody about, as I can see, and the only
question is, what's the best thing to do about it. There's only one
thing we can do; for if he don't care for the child, nobody wants to
make him. If he hasn't been coming to see her, he hasn't, and that's
all there is to it."

"No, it ain't!" exclaimed Lapham.

"There!" protested his wife.

"If he hasn't been coming to see her, what HAS he been coming for?"

"He's been coming to see Pen!" cried the wife. "NOW are you
satisfied?" Her tone implied that he had brought it all upon them; but
at the sight of the swift passions working in his face to a perfect
comprehension of the whole trouble, she fell to trembling, and her
broken voice lost all the spurious indignation she had put into it. "O
Silas! what are we going to do about it? I'm afraid it'll kill Irene."

Lapham pulled off the loose driving-glove from his right hand with the
fingers of his left, in which the reins lay. He passed it over his
forehead, and then flicked from it the moisture it had gathered there.
He caught his breath once or twice, like a man who meditates a struggle
with superior force and then remains passive in its grasp.

His wife felt the need of comforting him, as she had felt the need of
afflicting him. "I don't say but what it can be made to come out all
right in the end. All I say is, I don't see my way clear yet."

"What makes you think he likes Pen?" he asked quietly.

"He told her so last night, and she told me this morning. Was he at
the office to-day?"

"Yes, he was there.