he even answered him patiently when he asked her, "What did you say to
Tom when he told you it was the other one?"

"What could I say? I could do nothing, but try to take back what I had
said against her."

"Yes, you had quite enough to do, I suppose. It's an awkward business.
If it had been the pretty one, her beauty would have been our excuse.
But the plain one--what do you suppose attracted him in her?"

Mrs. Corey sighed at the futility of the question. "Perhaps I did her
injustice. I only saw her a few moments. Perhaps I got a false
impression. I don't think she's lacking in sense, and that's a great
thing. She'll be quick to see that we don't mean unkindness, and
can't, by anything we say or do, when she's Tom's wife." She pronounced
the distasteful word with courage, and went on: "The pretty one might
not have been able to see that. She might have got it into her head
that we were looking down on her; and those insipid people are terribly
stubborn. We can come to some understanding with this one; I'm sure of
that." She ended by declaring that it was now their duty to help Tom
out of his terrible predicament.

"Oh, even the Lapham cloud has a silver lining," said Corey. "In fact,
it seems really to have all turned out for the best, Anna; though it's
rather curious to find you the champion of the Lapham side, at last.
Confess, now, that the right girl has secretly been your choice all
along, and that while you sympathise with the wrong one, you rejoice in
the tenacity with which the right one is clinging to her own!" He added
with final seriousness, "It's just that she should, and, so far as I
understand the case, I respect her for it."

"Oh yes," sighed Mrs. Corey. "It's natural, and it's right." But she
added, "I suppose they're glad of him on any terms."

"That is what I have been taught to believe," said her husband. "When
shall we see our daughter-in-law elect? I find myself rather impatient
to have that part of it over."

Mrs. Corey hesitated. "Tom thinks we had better not call, just yet."

"She has told him of your terrible behaviour when you called before?"

"No, Bromfield! She couldn't be so vulgar as that?"

"But anything short of it?"

XXI.

LAPHAM was gone a fortnight. He was in a sullen humour when he came
back, and kept himself shut close within his own den at the office the
first day. He entered it in the morning without a word to his clerks
as he passed through the