" she said.

"I don't know what you call terribly long. I find the days terribly
short. I have had Harry with me, as I told you I should."

"Well, well. Say in one word, dear, that it is all right--if it is so."

"But it is not all right. I wonder what on earth the men do to the
boots, that I can never get a pair that do not hurt me in walking." At
this moment she was standing over him with his slippers.

"Will you have a glass of sherry before dinner, dear; you are so tired?"

"Sherry--no!"

"And what about Harry? You don't mean to say--"

"If you'll listen, I'll tell you what I do mean to say." Then he
described to her as well as he could, what had really taken place
between him and Harry Clavering at the office.

"He cannot mean to be false, if he is coming here," said the wife.

"He does not mean to be false; but he is one of those men who can be
false without meaning it, who allow themselves to drift away from their
anchors, and to be carried out into seas of misery and trouble, because
they are not careful in looking to their tackle. I think that he may
still be held to a right course, and therefore I have begged him to come
here."

"I am sure that you are right, Theodore. He is so good and so
affectionate, and he made himself so much one of us!"

"Yes; too easily by half. That is just the danger. But look here, Cissy.
I'll tell you what I mean to do. I will not see him myself; at any rate,
not at first. Probably I had better not see him at all. You shall talk
to him."

"By myself?"

"Why not? You and he have always been great friends, and he is a man who
can speak more openly to a woman than to another man."

"And what shall I say as to your absence?"

"Just the truth. Tell him that I am remaining in the dining-room because
I think his task will be easier with you in my absence. He has got
himself into some mess with that woman."

"With Lady Ongar?"

"Yes; not that her name was mentioned between us, but I suppose it is
so."

"Horrible woman; wicked, wretched creature!"

"I know nothing about that, nor, as I suppose, do you."

"My dear, you must have heard."

"But if I had--and I don't know that I have--I need not have believed. I
am told that she married an old man who is now dead, and I suppose she
wants a young husband."

"My dear!"

"If I were you, Cissy, I would say as little as might be about her. She
was an old friend of Harry's--"

"She jilted him when he was quite a boy; I