"Is it the same little influence at work upon him as some months ago?" asked Meiklejohn, bending nearer, a real confidential crony. "Which same little influence?" asked the lady, agog with a sense of secrecy, and genuinely anxious as to anything affecting her son. "Why, the girl, Winifred Bartlett." "Bartlett! As far as I know, I have never even heard her name." "Extraordinary! Why, it's the talk of the club." "Tell me. What is it all about?" "Ah, I must not be indiscreet. When I mentioned her, I took it for granted that you knew all about it, or I should not have told tales out of school." "Yes, but you and I are of a different generation than Rex. He belongs to the spring, we belong to the autumn. There is no question of telling tales out of school as between you and him. So now, please, you are going to tell me _all_." "Well, the usual story: A girl of lower social class; a young man's head turned by her wiles; the conventions more or less defied; business yawned at; mother, friends, everything shelved for the time being, and nothing important but the one thing. It's not serious, perhaps. So long as business is not _too_ much neglected, and no financial consequences follow, society thinks not a whit worse of a young man on that account--on one condition, mark you! There must be no question of marriage. But in this case there _is_ that question." "But this is merely ridiculous!" laughed Mrs. Carshaw shrilly. "Marriage! Can a son of mine be so quixotic?" "It is commonly believed that he is about to marry her." "But how on earth has it happened that I never heard a whisper of this preposterous thing?" "It _is_ extraordinary. Sometimes the one interested is the last to hear what every one is talking about." "Well, I never was so--amused!" Yet Mrs. Carshaw's wintry smile was not joyous. "Rex! I must laugh him out of it, if I meet him anywhere!" "That you will not succeed in doing, I think." "Well, then I'll frown him out of it. This is why--I see all now." "There you are hardly wise, to think of either laughing or frowning him out of it," said Meiklejohn, offering her worldly wisdom. "No, in such cases there is a better way, take my word for it." "And that is?" "Approach the girl. Avoid carefully saying one word to the young man, but approach _the girl_. That does it, if the girl is at all decent, and has any sensibility. Lay the facts plainly before her. Take her into your confidence--this flatters her. Invoke her love for the young man whom she is hurting by her intimacy with him--this puts her on her honor. Urge her to fly from him--this makes her feel herself a martyr, and turns her on the heroic tack. That is certainly what I should do if I were you, and I should do it without delay." "You're right. I'll do it," said Mrs. Carshaw. "Do you happen to know where this girl is to be found?"