er seemed actually to like her," Mrs. Corey reported to her
daughters, very much shaken in her own prejudices by the fact. If the
girl were not so offensive to his fastidiousness, there might be some
hope that she was not so offensive as Mrs. Corey had thought. "I
wonder how she will strike YOU," she concluded, looking from one
daughter to another, as if trying to decide which of them would like
Penelope least.

Irene's return and the visit of the Coreys formed a distraction for the
Laphams in which their impending troubles seemed to hang further aloof;
but it was only one of those reliefs which mark the course of
adversity, and it was not one of the cheerful reliefs. At any other
time, either incident would have been an anxiety and care for Mrs.
Lapham which she would have found hard to bear; but now she almost
welcomed them. At the end of three days Lapham returned, and his wife
met him as if nothing unusual had marked their parting; she reserved
her atonement for a fitter time; he would know now from the way she
acted that she felt all right towards him. He took very little note of
her manner, but met his family with an austere quiet that puzzled her,
and a sort of pensive dignity that refined his rudeness to an effect
that sometimes comes to such natures after long sickness, when the
animal strength has been taxed and lowered. He sat silent with her at
the table after their girls had left them alone, and seeing that he did
not mean to speak, she began to explain why Irene had come home, and to
praise her.

"Yes, she done right," said Lapham. "It was time for her to come," he
added gently.

Then he was silent again, and his wife told him of Corey's having been
there, and of his father's and mother's calling. "I guess Pen's
concluded to make it up," she said.

"Well, we'll see about that," said Lapham; and now she could no longer
forbear to ask him about his affairs.

"I don't know as I've got any right to know anything about it," she
said humbly, with remote allusion to her treatment of him. "But I
can't help wanting to know. How ARE things going, Si?"

"Bad," he said, pushing his plate from him, and tilting himself back in
his chair. "Or they ain't going at all. They've stopped."

"What do you mean, Si?" she persisted, tenderly.

"I've got to the end of my string. To-morrow I shall call a meeting of
my creditors, and put myself in their hands. If there's enough left to
satisfy them, I'm satis