terrible courage; she did not answer
directly, and Irene went on, "Because if you did, I'll thank you to
bring him back again. I'm not going to have him thinking that I'm
dying for a man that never cared for me. It's insulting, and I'm not
going to stand it. Now, you just send for him!"

"Oh, I will, 'Rene," gasped Penelope. And then she added, shamed out
of her prevarication by Irene's haughty magnanimity, "I have. That
is--he's coming back----"

Irene looked at her a moment, and then, whatever thought was in her
mind, said fiercely, "Well!" and left her to her dismay--her dismay and
her relief, for they both knew that this was the last time they should
ever speak of that again.

The marriage came after so much sorrow and trouble, and the fact was
received with so much misgiving for the past and future, that it
brought Lapham none of the triumph in which he had once exulted at the
thought of an alliance with the Coreys. Adversity had so far been his
friend that it had taken from him all hope of the social success for
which people crawl and truckle, and restored him, through failure and
doubt and heartache, the manhood which his prosperity had so nearly
stolen from him. Neither he nor his wife thought now that their
daughter was marrying a Corey; they thought only that she was giving
herself to the man who loved her, and their acquiescence was sobered
still further by the presence of Irene. Their hearts were far more
with her.

Again and again Mrs. Lapham said she did not see how she could go
through it. "I can't make it seem right," she said.

"It IS right," steadily answered the Colonel.

"Yes, I know. But it don't SEEM so."

It would be easy to point out traits in Penelope's character which
finally reconciled all her husband's family and endeared her to them.
These things continually happen in novels; and the Coreys, as they had
always promised themselves to do, made the best, and not the worst of
Tom's marriage.

They were people who could value Lapham's behaviour as Tom reported it
to them. They were proud of him, and Bromfield Corey, who found a
delicate, aesthetic pleasure in the heroism with which Lapham had
withstood Rogers and his temptations--something finely dramatic and
unconsciously effective,--wrote him a letter which would once have
flattered the rough soul almost to ecstasy, though now he affected to
slight it in showing it. "It's all right if it makes it more
comfortable for Pe