"Of course I do, you silly boy," said Betty. "I haven't forgiven you yet for getting me to go up it on false pretences. I'll see that you don't get me there again though." "I'll take particular good care that I do," said Lucius. "I like that backwater better than any place in Cambridge. Betty, what shall you do when I've gone down?" "I know I shall be very miserable," said Betty, her face falling. "But don't let us talk about that. We shall have another summer term together." Dr. Toller was making himself pleasant to his hostess. He was an agreeable man when he succeeded in banishing from his mind "the Problems that confront the Age," and brought himself down to the level of those who are content to let the Age worry along in its own way without making too much noise about it. Mrs. Binney, at the head of her own table, was an attractive figure in a gown of rich black silk, festooned with hangings of lace, and smiled engagingly at the Doctor's conversation. "Yes, Doctor," she said, in answer to a remark from him, "I feel I am a very fortunate woman. I have a comfortable house and the best of husbands. Peter is consideration itself to all my little whims, and I assure you I have a great many whims. There was a time when I feared that this happiness would never come to me. You know all about it and were very kind to me when I thought it my duty to cut myself off from all these bright prospects. I am thankful that that trouble passed away and I was not compelled to spend the rest of my life by myself. There is the closest confidence between me and my husband. He is of a sanguine disposition, and I think I may say that any weight of character I may have attained to--and you know, Doctor, I am a weighty woman in more ways than one--keeps the balance true. There is not a happier couple in all Bloomsbury than Peter and myself, and you know that in marrying him I have gained a son, which is a great joy to me, for I never had a child of my own. Lucius treats me with the greatest respect and affection, and I could not be fonder of him than if he were my own. I am as proud as anyone of his success to-day. Cambridge has not proved an unmixed source of pleasure to me, as you know, but I have seldom performed a more agreeable duty than when I arranged this light blue silk on the table this afternoon with my own hands. Anything that I can do towards making the dear boy's life happy with the sweet girl he is going to marry I _shall_ do, as if they were my own children, and consider myself fortunate in being permitted to do." If Mrs. Binney could speak in such terms of gratitude of the new life she had entered upon, what words could be too strong for her husband to use in describing his content in having gained as his helpmate that most estimable woman. She was the theme on which he was expatiating to Mrs. Jermyn while the conversations already recorded were going on around him.