esn't, the man will take the place of the
interest--there's a vacuum to be filled, and human nature abhors a
vacuum."

Mr. Langhope shrugged his shoulders. "I don't follow you. She adored her
husband."

His friend's fine smile was like a magnifying glass silently applied to
the gross stupidity of his remark. "Oh, I don't say it was a great
passion--but they got on perfectly," he corrected himself.

"So perfectly that you must expect her to want a little storm and stress
for a change. The mere fact that you and Mr. Tredegar objected to her
seeing Mr. Amherst last night has roused the spirit of opposition in
her. A year ago she hadn't any spirit of opposition."

"There was nothing for her to oppose--poor Dick made her life so
preposterously easy."

"My ingenuous friend! Do you still think that's any reason? The fact is,
Bessy wasn't awake, she wasn't even born, then.... She is now, and you
know the infant's first conscious joy is to smash things."

"It will be rather an expensive joy if the mills are the first thing she
smashes."

"Oh I imagine the mills are pretty substantial. I should, I own," Mrs.
Ansell smiled, "not object to seeing her try her teeth on them."

"Which, in terms of practical conduct, means----?"

"That I advise you not to disapprove of her staying on, or of her
investigating the young man's charges. You must remember that another
peculiarity of the infant mind is to tire soonest of the toy that no one
tries to take away from it."

"_Que diable!_ But suppose Truscomb turns rusty at this very unusual
form of procedure? Perhaps you don't quite know how completely he
represents the prosperity of the mills."

"All the more reason," Mrs. Ansell persisted, rising at the sound of Mr.
Tredegar's approach. "For don't you perceive, my poor distracted friend,
that if Truscomb turns rusty, as he undoubtedly will, the inevitable
result will be his manager's dismissal--and that thereafter there will
presumably be peace in Warsaw?"

"Ah, you divinely wicked woman!" cried Mr. Langhope, snatching at an
appreciative pressure of her hand as the lawyer reappeared in the
doorway.

VI

BEFORE daylight that same morning Amherst, dressing by the gas-flame
above his cheap wash-stand, strove to bring some order into his angry
thoughts. It humbled him to feel his purpose tossing rudderless on
unruly waves of emotion, yet strive as he would he could not regain a
hold on it. The events of the last twenty-