told him
everything. He thought quite awhile before speaking.

"Do you care for her very much, Faith dear?" he said, in his dear,
gentle way.

"If she has done the abominable thing that Mary says, I'll--hate her!
I'll turn her out of the house!" I cried, viciously.

"Ah!" said Aubrey, in a satisfied tone. He knows I wouldn't, but it
does do me so much good to threaten to do the awful things I'd like to
do if I were a cruel woman.

He rose and left the room. I started to follow him, but he waved me
back.

"I won't be gone a moment. Wait for me here."

I waited three or four years, and then, when I had grown white-haired
with age, he came back.

"Begin at the beginning, tell everything, and don't skip a word," I
demanded.

"Well," he began, obediently. "She was sobbing gently--not for effect
this time. I went in softly, and asked her what the matter was. She
said she had been out all the afternoon to see a friend who had just
been obliged to place her mother in a lunatic asylum, and she was
crying for sympathy. Then, as she saw me look at my rug, she said Mary
had left the rug out for her to take a nap early in the afternoon, and
that she had intended to, but had decided to go out instead. Now what
I object to is the style of her lying. I admire a good lie, but a
clumsy, misshapen, rippled affair like that one is an abomination in
the sight of the Lord."

I stood up with a flaming face.

"Don't get excited," said Aubrey. "She is going home to-morrow. Keep
calm to-night, and the next time you see Artie, he will relieve all
your feelings by what he will say."

"Why? What does he know?"

"Well, the Also Ran admires athletic girls, you know, not being able to
sit astride a horse himself, and through his boasting Artie has
discovered that Flora is a crack golf player--won the cup for her
college in her junior year."

I fell on the bed in a fit of hysterical laughter.

"If that's the way you are going to take it, I feel that I can tell you
the worst," said Aubrey, with a relieved face. "The fact is, I believe
that that girl has a game on with the Also Ran."

"Oh, _no_, Aubrey!" I cried. "I know that she is too desperately in
love with Artie to care about anybody else. She is so fascinating I
have but one fear, and that is that Artie will come under her sway
again. If he does, Cary would never forgive it."

"You are barking up the wrong tree, my dear," said my husband. "It is
far more lik