"But don't you see how revealing it is? If I can't go down to your office to superintend the arrangement of a few rugs and chairs, how can I keep a house--your house--in order? No, dear boy, we mustn't think of it--not now; perhaps by spring, but certainly not now." He was both saddened and perplexed, and yet his disappointment was not so keen as it had been when she had put off their wedding-day the first time, and when she turned a white, despairing face up to him, saying wildly: "Oh, Benny, why don't you give me up and marry some nice young girl?" He only took her in his arms and shut her lips with a kiss. "No more such talk," he said; "you're tired and a little morbid. Lee's lecture will do you good. I hope she gets after you for letting yourself down into these detestable moods." Signs of their troubled ride were on their faces as they entered the Congdon sitting-room (which also served as hall), and Lee put her arm about her guest with compassion uppermost in her heart. "You don't look a bit well to-night. What have you been doing?" "Nothing. That's the worst of it. If I'd been scrubbing floors or cleaning silver I'd feel that I had a right to be tired, but I've only been down to Ben's new office overseeing the laying of three rugs. I didn't lift a hand, and now look at me!" When they were in the privacy of Lee's dressing-room the hostess studied her guest critically. "You've something on your mind," she announced. "I always have something on my mind." "I know you do, and if you're ever going to get well you must get it off your mind. Do I know what it is?" "If you don't, you ought to. Since this retainer from Captain Haney, Ben is urging an immediate marriage." Lee Congdon was an unconquerable realist and truth-teller, and she could not at the moment utter any other than a divergent word. "We got you here to-night to talk over that Haney business. We don't entirely like it; at least, I don't. Frank has no responsibility, never had. Haney is not a bad man, and she isn't a bit low or common; but folks think she is. And it's going to hurt you both, I'm afraid, to have anything to do socially with them." "Oh, socially!" Alice cried, in disgust. "I thought we were coming to the big and boundless West, where such things don't count." "You have, and you haven't. The Springs is a little of the West, a little of England, and a good deal of the East. It's a foolish town in some ways, and I warn you lots of nice people will find it inconvenient to call on you for fear of meeting Mrs. Haney." "Oh, rats!" "Absurd, isn't it? I'm glad you put on that dress. You don't look tired now; your cheeks are blazing." "With wrath--not health." "At me?" "Oh no. At these people who assume to dictate whom we shall know." "They don't do that, dear; they only think you're paying too much for Ben's new office. But come down to dinner; we'll fight this out later."