Opportunities for doing good! It was on the tip of Kate’s tongue to say: “Ah, that must have been Lilla’s reason for accepting him!”; but Mrs. Drover was serenely continuing: “He has given her all the pearls already. She’s bringing them back tomorrow to be restrung.” And Kate understood that, for the present, the opportunities for doing good lay rather with the bridegroom than the bride. “Of course,” Mrs. Drover went on, “it will be a great sacrifice for her father and me to let her go; though luckily Baltimore is not far off. And it will be a serious kind of life; a life full of responsibilities. Hendrik is afraid that, just at first, Lilla may miss the excitements of New York; but I think I know my child better. When Lilla is _really happy_ no one cares less than she does for excitement.” The phrase gave Kate’s nerves a sudden twist. It was just what Chris used to say when she urged him to settle down to his painting--at least on the days when he didn’t say that excitement was necessary to the artist.... She looked at her sister-in-law’s impenetrable pinkness, and thought: “It might be Mrs. Minity speaking.” Fred Landers had telephoned that he had got back and was coming to dine; she fancied he had it on his mind not to let her feel her solitude while Anne was away; and she said to herself that from him at least she would get a glimpse of the truth. Fred Landers, as became a friend of the family, was also beaming; but he called Lilla’s engagement a “solution” and not a “sacrifice”; and this made it easier for Kate at last to put her question: “How did it happen?” He leaned back, pulling placidly at his after-dinner cigar, his old-fashioned square-toed pumps comfortably stretched to the fire; and for an instant Kate thought: “It might be pleasant to have him in that armchair every evening.” It was the first time such a possibility had occurred to her. “How did she pull it off, you mean?” He screwed up his friendly blue eyes in a confidential grin. “Well, I’m naturally not initiated; but I suppose in one of the good old ways, Lilla probably knows most of the tricks--and I rather think Nollie Tresselton’s been aiding and abetting her. It’s been going on for the last six months, I know, and a shooting-box in South Carolina is mixed up with it. Of course they all have a theory that Lilla need only be happy to be good.” “And what do you think about it?” He shrugged. “Why, I think it’s an experiment for which Maclew is to furnish the _corpus vile_. But he’s a thick-skinned subject, and it may not hurt him much, and may help Lilla. We can only look on and hope.” Kate sat pondering her next question. At length she said: “Was Mr. Maclew’s private secretary there?” “That fellow Fenno? Yes; he was on duty.” She fancied he frowned a little. “Why do you call him ‘that fellow’?”