“A little while,” said Hubert, with his imperturbable smile. “A very little while, I hope.” She had been wondering whether admonition would serve as a check or a stimulus. “I need hardly tell you that the young lady up stairs is not a person to be trifled with.” “I hardly know what you mean,” said Hubert. “Am I a person to trifle?” “Is it serious, then?” Hubert hesitated a moment. She perceived a sudden watchful quiver in his eye, like a sword turned edge outward. She unsheathed one of her own steely beams, and for the tenth of a second there was a dainty crossing of blades. “I admire Miss Lambert,” cried Hubert, “with all my heart.” “True admiration,” said Mrs. Keith, “is one half respect and the other half self-denial.” Hubert laughed, ever so politely. “I will put that into a sermon,” he said. “O, I have a sermon to preach you,” she answered. “Take your hat and go.” He looked very grave: “I will go up and get my hat.” Mrs. Keith, catching his eye as he closed the carriage door, wished to Heaven that she had held her tongue. “I have done him injustice,” she murmured as she went. “I have fancied him light, but I see he’s vicious.” Hubert, however, kept his promise in so far as that he did take up his hat. Having held it a moment he put it down. He had reckoned without his hostess! Nora was seated by the fire, with her bare arms folded, with a downcast brow. Dressed in pale corn-color, her white throat confined by a band of blue velvet overstitched with a dozen pearls, she was not a subject for summary farewells. Meeting her eyes, he saw they were filled with tears. “You must not take this thing too hard,” he said. For a moment she answered nothing; then she bent her face into her hands and her tears flowed. “O poor, poor Roger!” she cried. Hubert watched her weeping in her ball-dress those primitive tears. “I have not given him up,” he said at last. “But suppose I had—” She raised her head and looked at him. “O,” he cried, “I should have a hundred things to say! Both as a clergyman and as a man, I should preach resignation. In this crisis, let me speak my mind. Roger is part of your childhood; your childhood’s at an end. Possibly, with it he too is to go! At all events you are not to feel that in losing him you lose everything. I protest! As you sit here he belongs to your past. Ask yourself what part he may play in your future. Believe me, you will have to settle it, you will have to choose. Here, in any case, _your_ life begins. Your tears are for the dead past; this is the future, with its living needs. Roger’s fate is only one of them.”