Then I said: "Peter Blagden again! I _do_ wish that life would try to be a trifle more plausible. Why, but, of course! Peter meant to go chasing after her the minute my back was turned, and that was why he salved his conscience by presenting me with that thousand 'to get married on,' Even at the time it seemed peculiarly un-Petrine. Well, anyhow, in simple decency, he cannot combine the part of Shylock with that of Judas, and expect to have back his sordid lucre, so I am that much to the good, apart from everything else. Yes, I can see how it all happened,--and I can foresee what is going to happen, too, thank heaven!" For, as drowning men are said to recollect the unrecallable, I had vividly seen in that instant the two months' action just overpast, and its three participants,--the thin-lipped mother, the besotted millionaire, and the girl shakily hesitant between ideals and the habits of a life-time. "But I might have known the mother would win," I reflected: "Why, didn't Bettie say she would?" I refolded the letter I had just read, to keep it as a salutary relic; and then: "Dear Avis!" said I; "now heaven bless your common-sense! and I don't especially mind if heaven blesses your horrific painted hag of a mother, also, if they've a divine favor or two to spare." And I saw there was a letter from Peter Blagden, too. It said, in part: I am everything that you think me, Bob. My one defence is that I could not help it. I loved her from the moment I saw her ... You did not appreciate her, you know. You take, if you will forgive my saying it, too light a view of life to value the love of a good woman properly, and Avis noticed it of course. Now I do understand what the unselfish love of woman means, because my first wife was an angel, as you know ... It is a comfort to think that my dear saint in heaven knows I am not quite so lonely now, and is gladdened by that knowledge. I know she would have wished it-- I read no further. "Oh, Stella! they have all forgotten. They all insist to-day that you were an angel, and they have come almost to believe that you habitually flew about the world in a night-gown, with an Easter lily in your hand--But I remember, dear. I know you'd scratch her eyes out. I know you'd do it now, if only you were able, because you loved this Peter Blagden." Thereafter I must have wasted a full quarter of an hour in recalling all sorts of bygone unimportant happenings, and I was not bothering one way or the other about Avis ... 3 In the moonlighted garden I found Bettie. But with her was Josiah Clarriker, Fairhaven's leading business-man. He shook hands, and whatever delight he may have felt at seeing me was admirably controlled. "Now don't let me interfere with your eloquence," I urged, "but go right on with the declamation." "I make no pretension to eloquence, Mr. Townsend. I was merely recalling to Miss Hamlyn's attention the beautiful lines of our immortal poet, Owen Meredith, which run, as I remember them: