ouldn't see it in the right light.
Archie did, as soon as I told him. Didn't you, Archie? And I _didn't_
tell him," Ena ran on, excitedly, "till I saw what trouble dear Claudie
was in. When Claudie began to see for himself I betrayed his confidence
to the extent of telling his father, but not before. You could hardly
blame me for that, could you?--his own father. And when I did tell
Archie--why, it was so plain that a child could have understood."

The question, "What was plain?" could not but come to Lois's lips, but
she succeeded in withholding it. She even rose, with signs of going. It
was Archie who responded to his wife, taking a man's view of that which
seemed to her so damning.

"We must make allowances, of course, for its being a cock-and-bull story
to begin with. Girls like that never know how to tell the truth."

"We couldn't treat it as a cock-and-bull story so long as Claude
believed it," the mother declared, in defense of her right to be
anxious. "And Thor believed it, too. I know he did. And I _do_ blame
Thor for not telling Claude--a boy so inexperienced!--that a girl
couldn't be getting money from some other man--and go on getting it
after she was married--unless there'd been something wrong."

Lois felt as if her blood had been arrested at her heart. "Money from
some other man?"

"Money from some other man," Mrs. Masterman repeated, firmly. "I told
Claude at the time that no man in his senses would settle money on a
girl like that unless there'd been a reason--and a very good reason,
too. A very good reason, _too_, I said. But Claude's as ignorant of the
world as if he was ten years old. He really is. She took him in
completely."

Being too consciously a gentleman to say more in disparagement of a
woman's character than he had permitted himself already, Masterman
remained in the library while his wife accompanied Lois to the door. The
latter had said good-by and was descending the steps when Ena cried out
in a tone that was like a confession:

"Oh, Lois, you don't think that poor girl had any _reason_ to throw
herself into the pond, do you?"

At the foot of the steps Lois turned and looked upward. Ena was wringing
her hands, but the daughter-in-law didn't notice it. As a matter of
fact, Lois was too deeply sunk into thoughts of her own to have any
attention to spare for other people's searchings of heart. Having heard
the question, she could answer it, but absently, and as though it were a
poi