"Not a bit of it. It was settled quite irrespective of her--that day when you saw me kiss Doris in the hall. It was all arranged then; only, of course, we thought we were going to be hard up. I shall never forget that, Mr. Williams--that Doris was willing to give up that enormous income for me." "Was she?" said Williams. And as Hale nodded to himself he went on, "Why did you go away like that for a month?" "Doris wanted me to," he answered. "She thought it was only fair to Miss Southgate. I felt perfectly safe. I had her promise, and she thought she might bring Miss Southgate round to approving of the marriage. I never thought she'd succeed; but, you see, she did. She's a very remarkable woman, is Doris." "She is, indeed," said Williams cordially. Presently she came downstairs--the very remarkable woman--hand in hand with Antonia, and she and Hale drove away to the steamer. Williams found himself holding Antonia's large, heavy, white hand. "I think you've been wonderful, Miss Southgate," he said. She wiped her eyes. "I did not want to make it impossible for her to come back," she said, "when she finds that man out." The lawyer did not answer, for it was his opinion that if there was to be any finding out it would be done by Hale. WHOSE PETARD WAS IT? Aunt Georgy Hadley was rather unpopular with her own generation because she did not think the younger one so terrible. "I can't see," she insisted, "that they are so different from what we were." For an unmarried lady of forty to admit that she had ever had anything in common with the young people of the present day shocked her contemporaries. Aunt Georgy was a pale, plain, brilliant-eyed woman, who liked to talk, to listen to other people talk, and to read. She simply hated to do anything else. As a girl she had always said that the dream of her life was to be bedridden; and so when, after she had ceased to be young, she had broken her hip so badly as to make walking difficult many people regarded it as a judgment from heaven. Georgy herself said it was a triumph of mind over matter; she was now freed from all active obligations, while it became the duty of her friends and relations to come and sit beside her sofa and tell her the news, of which, since she lived in a small town, there was always a great deal. Her two sisters, married and mothers both, differed with her most violently about the younger generation. Her sister Fanny, who had produced three robust, handsome members of the gang under discussion, asked passionately, "Did we carry flasks to parties?" "How silly it would have been if we had, when it was always there waiting for us," answered Georgy. Her sister Evelyn, who had produced one perfect flower--little Evie--demanded, "Did we motor thirty miles at midnight to dance in disreputable road houses?"