"Mrs. Munger and her tribe?" said Suzette, with a contemptuous little smile. "I don't think she would contribute much. Why not the Morrells; or the Putneys, at once?" She added abruptly, "I think I shall ask Jack Wilmington." Adeline gave a start, and looked keenly at her; but she went on quite imperviously. "The Hilarys know him. Matt Hilary and he were quite friends at one time. Besides," she said, as if choosing now to recognize the quality of Adeline's gaze, "I don't care to have Louise suppose there's the shadow of anything between us any more, not even a quarrel." Adeline gave a little sigh of relief. "I'm glad that's it. I'm always afraid you'll get--" "To thinking about him again? You needn't be. All that's as thoroughly dead and gone as anything can be in this world. No," she continued, in the tone that is more than half for one's self in such dealings, "whatever there was of that, or might have been, Mr. Wilmington has put an end to, long ago. It never was anything but a fancy, and I don't believe it could have been anything else if it had ever come to the point." "I'm glad it seems so to you now, Sue," said her sister, "but you needn't tell me that you weren't very much taken with him at one time; and if it's going to begin again, I'd much rather you wouldn't have him here." Suzette laughed at the old-maidish anxiety. "Do you think you shall see me at his feet before the evening is over? But I should like to see him at mine for a moment, and to have the chance of hearing his explanations." "I don't believe he's ever been bad!" cried Adeline. "He's just weak." "Very well. I should like to hear what a man has to say for his weakness, and then tell him that I had a little weakness of my own, and didn't think I had strength to endure a husband that had to be explained." "Ah, you're in love with him, yet! You shall never have him here in the world, after the way he's treated you!" "Don't be silly, Adeline! Don't be romantic! If you had ever been in love yourself, you would know that people outlive that as well as other things. Let's see how the drawing-room will do for the dance?" She jumped from her chair and touched the electric button at the chimney. "You think that nothing but death can kill a fancy, and yet nobody marries their first love, and lots of women have second husbands." The man showed himself at the door, and she said to him in a rapid aside: "Turn up the lights in the drawing-room, James," and returned to her sister. "No, Adeline! The only really enduring and undying thing is a slight. That lasts--with _me_!" Adeline was moved to say, in the perverse honesty of her soul, and from the inborn New England love of justice, "I don't believe he ever meant it, Sue. I don't believe but what he was influenced--"