'Twas well for all of them that Mrs. Lawton had not heard of the "Herr Gobbler" episode, for she alone approved of William Henry Bulkley, she alone greeted him warmly, effusively, and urged him to repeat his patronizing visits. She passed much of her time in trying to appraise at its exact value that long gloating look of admiration he had bestowed upon the fair Dorothy that day of his first visit to them, back in May. Like a very small cat in waiting for a very large mouse, she sat with unwinking eyes, with sharply alert ears, with every strained nerve ready, like a sensitive whisker, to warn her back from a dangerously tight place, and watched tensely, patiently watched, ready to spring upon the silky-coated, cheese-fed big mouse and drag him in triumph to the feet of her little white kitten, whom she would instruct to pat him judiciously, with velvet paw, or tear punitively, with sharp curved claws, just as pussy-mamma should think fit. Nothing in all Letitia Lawton's silly, superficial life had betrayed so completely her absolute selfishness as did this eager desire to secure a son-in-law in the person of William Henry Bulkley. Her knowledge of the man in the past, and the piteous picture her memory held of Mrs. Bulkley's pale, fast-thinning face, when, bravely hiding her wounded pride and slain affection, she received her sympathetically prying neighbors with uncomplaining chill courtesy, but such woful eyes, that they had withdrawn without daring to speak one word of condemnation against the man of whom a certain splendid infamy had but recently caused it to be said: "Why, his conduct brings a blush of shame to the cheek of impropriety's self!"