This was in March. Mrs. Houghton and Edith were in town for a few days' shopping, and of course they meant to see Eleanor. "I'll go to the dressmaker's," Edith had told her mother, "and then I'll corral Maurice, and we'll drop in on Mrs. Newbolt, and _then_ I'll meet you at Eleanor's. I don't hanker for a long call on Eleanor." Edith's gayly candid face hardened. So it was that Mrs. Houghton had arrived ahead of her girl, and the two older women were alone before a little smoldering fire in the library. Eleanor had left her tea tray to go across the room and give little helpless Bingo a lump of sugar. "He only eats what I give him," she said; "dear old Bingo! I think he actually suffers, he's so jealous." Then, pouring Mrs. Houghton's tea, she suddenly spoke: "I know you--know?" When Mary Houghton said, gravely, yes, she "_knew_," Eleanor said, "Oh, Mrs. Houghton, Maurice and I are nearer to each other than we ever were before!" "That's as it should be. And as I knew it would be, too. You've done a noble thing, Eleanor." "No! No! Don't say that! It was nothing. Because I--love him so. And he never cared for that woman. She has no brains, he says. But what I want is to get the boy for him. Oh, he must have the boy!" Then she told Mrs. Houghton how Maurice went to see the child. "He goes once a week, though he says she's jealous if he makes too many suggestions; so he has to be very careful or she would get angry. But he has managed it so I have seen him; last summer he took him to the circus, and I sat near them. And twice he's had him in the park and I spoke to him. And on Christmas he took him to the movies; I sat beside him. And I buttoned his coat when he went out!" Her eyes were rapt. Mary Houghton, listening, said to herself, "_Now_ what will Henry Houghton say about the 'explosion'? I shall rub it into him when I get home!" ... "Eleanor, you are magnificent!" she said. "But how could I do anything else--if I loved Maurice?" Eleanor said. "Oh, I do want him to have Jacky! We must make a man of him. It would be wicked to let Lily ruin him! And I want to give him music lessons. He has Maurice's blue eyes." It was infinitely pathetic, this woman with gray hair, telling of her young husband's joy in his little son--who was not hers. And Eleanor's sense of the paramount importance of the child gave Mrs. Houghton a new and real respect for her. Aloud, she agreed heartily with the statement that Jacky must be saved from Lily. "She isn't bad," Eleanor explained; "but she's just like an animal, Maurice says. Devoted to Jacky, but no more idea of right and wrong than--than Bingo!" She was so happy that she laughed, and looked almost young--but at that moment the street door opened, closed, and in the hall some one else laughed. Instantly Eleanor looked old. "It's Edith," she said, coldly. It was--with Maurice in tow. "I haled him forth from his office," Edith said; "and we went to see your aunt, Eleanor. She's a lamb!"