s--well. Well, I don't know quite why I'm keeping you here--though
there was something I wanted to say to you, I believe--in a most serious
and grandmotherly manner too--the way of a grown woman as Sargent would
put it--poor Sargent--" She laughed.

"Oh yes, I remember now. It was only that I don't think you
need--worry--about Mr. Billett any more. You see?"

"I think so," said Oliver with some incomprehension.

"Seeing him done up that way in towels," she mused with a flicker of
mirth. "And the way he looked at me when I was telling about things
afterwards--oh it wouldn't do, you know, Oliver, it wouldn't do! Your
friend is--essentially--a--highly--Puritan--young man," she added
slowly. Oliver started--that was one of the things so few people knew
about Ted.

"Oh yes--wholly. Even in the way he'd go to the devil. He'd do it with
such a religious conviction--take it so _hard_. It would eat him up.
Completely. And it isn't--amusing--to go to the devil with anybody
whose diabolism would be so efficiently pious--a reversed kind of
Presbyterianism. We wouldn't do that, you know--you or myself," and
for an instant as she spoke Oliver felt what he characterized as a most
damnable feeling of kinship with her.

It was true. Oliver had been struck with that during his army
experiences--things somehow had never seemed to stick to him the way
they had seemed to with Ted.

"Which is one reason that I feel so sure Mr. Billett will get on very
well with Sargent's daughter--if his Puritan principles don't make him
feel too much as if he were linking her for life to a lost soul," went
on Mrs. Severance.

"_Wha-a-at!_"

"My dear Oliver, whatever my failings may be, I have some penetration.
Mr. Billett was garrulous at times, I fear--young men are so apt to
be with older women. Oh _no_--he was beautifully sure that he was not
betraying himself--the dear ostrich. And that letter--really that was
clumsy of both of you, Oliver--when I could see the handwriting--all
modern and well-bred girls seem to write the same curly kind of hand
somehow--and then Sargent's address in embossed blue letters on the
back. And I _couldn't_ have suspected him of carrying on an intrigue
with Mrs. Piper!" and Oliver was forced to smile at her tinkle of
laughter. Then she grew a little earnest.

"I don't suppose it was--Mr. Billett--I wanted so--exactly," she mused.
"It was more--Mr. Billett's age--Mr. Billett's undeniable freshness--if
you see. I'm