Mrs. Tiffany must hear all about it from both of them. When they came to the hero's injury, she dismissed Eleanor, made him strip his massy shoulder, and got out her pet liniment. The Judge, coming home in the midst of these surgical cares, heard the story retold with heroic additions by his wife. Dinner that night was a merry, a happy, an intimate party. When Bertram left, Mrs. Tiffany did not follow him to the door, as was her old-fashioned custom. He waited a moment, as though expecting something. His eyes were on Eleanor. She did not move. She only bade him a simple and easy good night over her shoulder. The old couple sat for a long time before the fire. Eleanor was gone--not to bed, could they but have known it, but to sit by her window and breathe bay-fragrance and drink the foggy night air off the Gate. The Judge smiled down on that faded daintiness at his feet. "Are we now to consider him in the light of a nephew-in-law?" he asked. "It has bothered me a good deal," said Mattie Tiffany. "What do you think I ought to do?" "If that frightful social responsibility of yours drives you to anything," responded the Judge, "I should say you'd best leave it alone." "But Edward, dear, I'm just like a mother to her--and goodness knows I haven't always been the best of mothers. There was her father--you know how long I shirked that--" "The sin of omission that you will carry to your grave--" "And somehow this is so like Billy Gray! It was just this way in her mother's case. When Billy came around--you remember how bonny a boy he was then, Edward--I, her own sister, could never tell how she felt toward him. I've always told you that Eleanor has slipped a generation. She's her grandmother, not her mother, in mind. But she's just like her mother in one thing. You can't ever tell what she's thinking about, and the deeper her thoughts go the harder it is to tell! That's why I'm considering all this so carefully--she doesn't commit herself in one way or the other. It's a sign." "Knowing you, Mattie, I presume that you've conducted researches into his desirability as a nephew-in-law?" "Well, shouldn't I? Goodness knows, we don't lead a conventional life in this family, and I don't chaperone her. I reproach myself a little with that. When Mrs. Goodyear wanted to take her up and put her into the Fortnightly, it wasn't so much Eleanor's disinclination as my own laziness about getting up gowns and paddling about paying calls which kept me back--and that's God's truth." "And these penitential exercises in detective work--what have they brought forth?" "He's a little careless morally, I think. He's had too much conviviality about the Club. I'm afraid he's blossoming over young. They can say all they want about wild oats, but in this city it's a mistake to sow them all at once. That's one reason why I've been so good to him. I flatter myself that a house like this is a moral influence on him." "It's all a concern for his soul with you, then?"