was rather absurd to propose making a purely personal
question the pivot on which his relations with 'Every Other Week' turned.
He took a hint from March's position and decided that he did not know
Dryfoos in these relations; he knew only Fulkerson, who had certainly had
nothing to do with Mrs. Mandel's asking his intentions. As he reflected
upon this he became less eager to look Fulkerson up and make the magazine
a partner of his own sufferings. This was the soberer mood to which
Beaton trusted that night even before he slept, and he awoke fully
confirmed in it. As he examined the offence done him in the cold light of
day, he perceived that it had not come either from Mrs. Mandel, who was
visibly the faltering and unwilling instrument of it, or from Christine,
who was altogether ignorant of it, but from Dryfoos, whom he could not
hurt by giving up his place. He could only punish Fulkerson by that, and
Fulkerson was innocent. Justice and interest alike dictated the passive
course to which Beaton inclined; and he reflected that he might safely
leave the punishment of Dryfoos to Christine, who would find out what had
happened, and would be able to take care of herself in any encounter of
tempers with her father.

Beaton did not go to the office during the week that followed upon this
conclusion; but they were used there to these sudden absences of his,
and, as his work for the time was in train, nothing was made of his
staying away, except the sarcastic comment which the thought of him was
apt to excite in the literary department. He no longer came so much to
the Leightons, and Fulkerson was in no state of mind to miss any one
there except Miss Woodburn, whom he never missed. Beaton was left, then,
unmolestedly awaiting the course of destiny, when he read in the morning
paper, over his coffee at Maroni's, the deeply scare-headed story of
Conrad's death and the clubbing of Lindau. He probably cared as little
for either of them as any man that ever saw them; but he felt a shock, if
not a pang, at Conrad's fate, so out of keeping with his life and
character. He did not know what to do; and he did nothing. He was not
asked to the funeral, but he had not expected that, and, when Fulkerson
brought him notice that Lindau was also to be buried from Dryfoos's
house, it was without his usual sullen vindictiveness that he kept away.
In his sort, and as much as a man could who was necessarily so much taken
up with himself, he was sor