“If Wilson ever looks like a Greek god to her, she’s all right, she loves him—you can tell her so for me. Wilson! Here are we sitting up here like a pair of lovers, and they—Hello!”

The hall door opened and shut, the piano lid closed simultaneously with a bang, and there was a swirl of skirts again toward the staircase that scattered the guilty pair on the landing. The hostess heaved a patient sigh.

“They shall speak,” said Mrs. Belmore when another hour had gone with the situation still unchanged. Her gentle voice had a note of determination. “I can’t understand why he doesn’t make her. She is literally crying her eyes out, because the whole day has been lost. Why didn’t you send him into the parlour for a book, as I told you to, when I came up to take care of Dorothy?”

“He wouldn’t go—he said he wasn’t doing the kindergarten act any more. Hang it, I don’t blame him. A man objects to being made a fool of before people, and he’s tired of it. Here he goes off again to- morrow for two weeks, and she with no more heart than—”

“Where is he now?” asked Mrs. Belmore.

“Upstairs in my room, smoking.”

“Smoking! I thought he’d promised her solemnly not to smoke.”

“Yes, he did; but he says he doesn’t care a—red apple; he’s going to have some comfort out of the day. I’ve left him with a box of cigars; good ones, too. He’s having the time of his life.”

“O—o—h!” said Mrs. Belmore, with the rapt expression of one who sees beyond the veil. When she spoke it was with impressive slowness. “When you hear me come downstairs with Edith and go in the parlour, you wait a moment and then bring him down—with his cigar—into the library. Do you understand?”

“No,” said Mr. Belmore.

“Oh, Herbert! If she sees him smoking—! There’s no time to lose, for I have to get tea to-night. When I call you, leave him and come at once, do you hear? Don’t stop a minute—just come, before they get a chance to follow.”

“You bet I’ll come,” said Mr. Belmore, “like a bird to its—I will really, petty.”

That he nearly knocked her down by his wildly tragic rush when she called from the back hall, “Herbert, please come at once! I can’t turn off the water,” was a mere detail—they clung to each other in silent laughter, behind the enshrouding portières, not daring to move. The football of the deserted Edith was heard advancing from the front room to the library, and her clear and solemn voice, as of one actuated only by the lofty dictates of duty penetrated distinctly to the listeners.

“Alan Wilson, is it possible that you are smoking? Have you broken your promised word?”

“Well, they’re at it at last,” said Mr. Belmore, relapsing into a chair in the kitchen with a sigh of relief, and drawing a folded newspaper from his pocket. “I wouldn’t be in his shoes for a farm.”

“Oh, it will be all right now,” said Mrs. Belmore serenely. She added with some irrelevancy, “I’ve left the children to undress each other; they’ve been so good. It’s been such a different day, though, from what we had planned.”

“It’s too bad that you have to get the tea.”

“Oh, I don’t mind that a bit.”