he lady's champion.
"Perhaps I ought to understand her position better than any one here,
and--"

"Then that's just what you ought not to do, Mr Cradell," said Mrs
Roper. And now the lady of the house spoke out her mind with much
maternal dignity and with some feminine severity. "That's just what
a young man like you has no business to know. What's a married
woman like that to you, or you to her; or what have you to do with
understanding her position? When you've a wife of your own, if ever
you do have one, you'll find you'll have trouble enough then without
anybody else interfering with you. Not but what I believe you're
innocent as a lamb about Mrs Lupex; that is, as far as any harm goes.
But you've got yourself into all this trouble by meddling, and was
like enough to get yourself choked upstairs by that man. And who's to
wonder when you go on pretending to be in love with a woman in that
way, and she old enough to be your mother? What would your mamma say
if she saw you at it?"

"Ha, ha, ha!" laughed Cradell.

"It's all very well your laughing, but I hate such folly. If I see a
young man in love with a young woman, I respect him for it;" and then
she looked at Johnny Eames. "I respect him for it,--even though he
may now and then do things as he shouldn't. They most of 'em does
that. But to see a young man like you, Mr Cradell, dangling after an
old married woman, who doesn't know how to behave herself; and all
just because she lets him to do it;--ugh!--an old broomstick with a
petticoat on would do just as well! It makes me sick to see it, and
that's the truth of it. I don't call it manly; and it ain't manly, is
it, Miss Spruce?"

"Of course I know nothing about it," said the lady to whom the appeal
was thus made. "But a young gentleman should keep himself to himself
till the time comes for him to speak out,--begging your pardon all
the same, Mr Cradell."

"I don't see what a married woman should want with any one after her
but her own husband," said Amelia.

"And perhaps not always that," said John Eames.

It was about an hour after this when the front-door bell was rung,
and a scream from Jemima announced to them all that some critical
moment had arrived. Amelia, jumping up, opened the door, and then the
rustle of a woman's dress was heard on the lower stairs. "Oh, laws,
ma'am, you have given us sich a turn," said Jemima. "We all thought
you was run away."

"It's Mrs Lupex," said Amelia. And in two min