"Yes, I try to." "He is good stuff," her husband said; "straight as a string! When he came into the studio to talk things over he was as sober as if he were fifty, and hadn't made an ass of himself. He took up the income question in a surprisingly businesslike way; then he said that of course he knew I didn't like it--his giving up college and flying off the handle, and getting married without saying anything to me. 'But,' he said, 'Eleanor's aunt is an old hell-cat;--she was going to drag Eleanor abroad, and I had to get her out of her clutches!' ... I think," Henry Houghton interrupted himself, "that's one explanation of Maurice: rescuing a forlorn damsel. Well, I was perfectly direct with him; I said, 'My dear fellow, Mrs. Newbolt is not a hell-cat; and the elopement was in bad taste. Elopements are always in bad taste. But the elopement is the least important part of it. The difference in age is the serious thing.' I got it out of him just what it is--almost twenty years. She might be his mother!--he admitted that he had had to lie about himself to get the license. I said, '_Your_ age is the dangerous thing, Maurice, not hers; and it's up to you to keep steady!' Of course he didn't believe me," said Mr. Houghton, sighing. "He's in love all right, poor infant! The next thing is for me to find a job for him.... She is good looking, Mary?" She nodded, and he said again, "A pre-Raphaelite woman; those full red lips, and that lovely black hair growing so low on her forehead. And a really good voice. And a charming figure. But I tell you one thing: she's got to stop twitting on facts. Did you hear her say, 'Maurice is so ridiculously young, he doesn't remember'--? I don't know what it was he didn't remember. Something unimportant. But she must not put ideas about his youth into his head. He'll know it soon enough! _You_ tell her that." "Thank you so much!" said Mary Houghton. "Henry, you mustn't say things before Edith! Suppose Eleanor had known her _Little Dorrit_?" "She doesn't know anything; and she has nothing to say." "Well, it might be worse," she encouraged him. "Suppose she were talkative?" He nodded: "Yes; a dull woman is bad, and a talkative woman is bad; but a dull talkative woman is hell." "My _dear_! I'm glad Edith's in bed. Well, I think I like her." CHAPTER VI But the time arrived when Mrs. Houghton was certain that she "liked" Maurice's wife. It would have come sooner if Eleanor's real sweetness had not been hidden by her tiresome timidity ... a thunderstorm sent her, blanched and panting, to sit huddled on her bed, shutters closed, shades drawn; she schemed not to go upstairs by herself in the dark; she was preoccupied when old Lion took them off on a slow, jogging drive, for fear of a runaway.