to hang her modern photograph and her obstinate little air penche in the gallery of our shrewd great-grandmothers. She should fall into line, she should keep up the tone. When she married my brother I don’t suppose she took him for a member of a societe de bonnes oeuvres. I don’t say we’re right; who IS right? But we are as history has made us, and if any one’s to change it had better be our charming, but not accommodating, friend.” Again Madame Clairin paused, again she opened and closed her great modern fan, which clattered like the screen of a shop-window. “Let her keep up the tone!” she prodigiously repeated. Longmore felt himself gape, but he gasped an “Ah!” to cover it. Madame Clairin’s dip into the family annals had apparently imparted an honest zeal to her indignation. “For a long time,” she continued, “my belle-soeur has been taking the attitude of an injured woman, affecting a disgust with the world and shutting herself up to read free-thinking books. I’ve never permitted myself, you may believe, the least observation on her conduct, but I can’t accept it as the last word either of taste or of tact. When a woman with her prettiness lets her husband stray away she deserves no small part of her fate. I don’t wish you to agree with me--on the contrary; but I call such a woman a pure noodle. She must have bored him to death. What has passed between them for many months needn’t concern us; what provocation my sister has had--monstrous, if you wish--what ennui my brother has suffered. It’s enough that a week ago, just after you had ostensibly gone to Brussels, something happened to produce an explosion. She found a letter in his pocket, a photograph, a trinket, que sais-je? At any rate there was a grand scene. I didn’t listen at the keyhole, and I don’t know what was said; but I’ve reason to believe that my poor brother was hauled over the coals as I fancy none of his ancestors have ever been--even by angry ladies who weren’t their wives.” Longmore had leaned forward in silent attention with his elbows on his knees, and now, impulsively, he dropped his face into his hands. “Ah poor poor woman!” “Voila!” said Madame Clairin. “You pity her.” “Pity her?” cried Longmore, looking up with ardent eyes and forgetting the spirit of the story to which he had been treated in the miserable facts. “Don’t you?” “A little. But I’m not acting sentimentally--I’m acting scientifically. We’ve always been capable of ideas. I want to arrange things; to see my brother free to do as he chooses; to see his wife contented. Do you understand me?” “Very well, I think,” the young man said. “You’re the most immoral person I’ve lately had the privilege of conversing with.” Madame Clairin took it calmly. “Possibly. When was ever a great peacemaker not immoral?” “Ah no,” Longmore protested. “You’re too superficial to be a great peacemaker. You don’t begin to know anything about Madame de Mauves.”