ectly honest. He'd
sooner put you off than on, any day. That's very sound in a lawyer.
But if he carries it into wedlock he's a damned fool, in my opinion."

They parted on very good terms, Lingen for the Albany, Urquhart
elsewhere.

Meantime Lancelot, wriggling in his bed, was discussing Urquhart. "I
say, Mamma," he said--a leading question--"do you think Mr. Urquhart
really had two wives?"

"No, darling, I really don't. I think he was pulling our legs."

That was bad. "All our legs?"

"All that were pullable. Certainly your two."

"Perhaps he was." Lancelot sighed. "Oh, what happened to the Turk? I
forgot him, thinking of his wives.... He said, 'one of my wives,' you
know. He might have had six then.... I say, perhaps Mr. Urquhart is a
Turk in disguise. What do you think?"

Lucy was sleepy, and covered a yawn. "I don't think, darling. I can't.
I'm going to bed, and you are going to sleep. Aren't you now?"

"Yes, of course, yes, of course. Did I tell you about the pirate part?
His ship was a brigantine ... called the _Dog Star_."

"Oh, was it?"

"Yes, it was. And he used to hang the chaps, sometimes for treachery,
and sometimes for fun."

"How horrid!" said Lucy. "Good night."

"Oh, well," came through the blankets, "of course you don't
understand, but I do. Good night." And he was asleep at the turn of
that minute.

James had disappeared into his room, so she took herself off to bed.
Surely he might have said a word! It had all gone off so well. Mr.
Urquhart had been such a success, and she really liked him very much.
And how the Judge had taken to him! And how Lancelot! At the first
stair she stopped, in three quarters of a mind to go in and screw a
sentence out of him. But no! She feared the angry blank of the
eyeglass. Trailing up to bed, she thought that she could date the
crumbling of her married estate by the ascendency of the eyeglass. And
to think, only to think, that when she was engaged to James she used
to play with it, to try it in her eye, to hide it from him! Well, she
had Lancelot--her darling boy. That brought to mind that, a week
to-night, she would be orphaned of him. The day she dreaded was coming
again--and the blank weeks and months which followed it.

True to his ideas of "discipline," of the value of doing a thing well
for its own sake, Macartney was dry about the merits of the
dinner-party when they met at breakfast. "Eh? Oh, yes, I thought it
went quite reasonably. Urquhart