verily believed, would feel it more than any family in the world. When Waterlow asked what made them of so exceptionally fine a fibre he could only answer that they just happened to be--not enviably, if one would; it was his father’s influence and example, his very genius, the worship of privacy and good manners, a hatred of all the new familiarities and profanations. The artist sought to know further, at last and rather wearily, what in two words was the practical question his friend desired he should consider. Whether he should be justified in throwing the girl over--was that the issue? “Gracious goodness, no! For what sort of sneak do you take me? She made a mistake, but any innocent young creature might do that. It’s whether it strikes you I should be justified in throwing THEM over.” “It depends upon the sense you attach to justification.” “I mean should I be miserably unhappy? Would it be in their power to make me so?” “To try--certainly, if they’re capable of anything so nasty. The only fair play for them is to let you alone,” Waterlow wound up. “Ah, they won’t do that--they like me too much!” Gaston ingenuously cried. “It’s an odd way of liking! The best way to show their love will be to let you marry where your affections, and so many other charming things, are involved.” “Certainly--only they question the charming things. They feel she represents, poor little dear, such dangers, such vulgarities, such possibilities of doing other dreadful things, that it’s upon THEM--I mean on those things--my happiness would be shattered.” “Well,” the elder man rather dryly said, “if you yourself have no secrets for persuading them of the contrary I’m afraid I can’t teach you one.” “Yes, I ought to do it myself,” Gaston allowed in the candour of his meditations. Then he went on in his torment of hesitation: “They never believed in her from the first. My father was perfectly definite about it. At heart they never accepted her; they only pretended to do so because I guaranteed her INSTINCTS--that’s what I did, heaven help me! and that she was incapable of doing a thing that could ever displease them. Then no sooner was my back turned than she perpetrated that!” “That was your folly,” Waterlow remarked, painting away. “My folly--to turn my back?” “No, no--to guarantee.” “My dear fellow, wouldn’t you?”--and Gaston stared. “Never in the world.” “You’d have thought her capable--?” “Capabilissima! And I shouldn’t have cared.” “Do you think her then capable of breaking out again in some new way that’s as bad?” “I shouldn’t care if she was. That’s the least of all questions.” “The least?” “Ah don’t you see, wretched youth,” cried the artist, pausing from his work and looking up--“don’t you see that the question of her possibilities is as nothing compared to that of yours? She’s the sweetest young thing I ever saw; but even if she happened not to be I should still urge you to marry her, in simple self-preservation.”