AGAINST all reason she persisted in a sinister interpretation of her lovely neighbour’s conduct;—never would Mrs. Dodge admit that Mr. Dodge had the right of the matter, and after a time she complained that she found his continued interest in it “pretty tiresome.” “You keep bringing it up,” she said, “because you think you’ve had a wretched little triumph over me. It’s one of those things that never can be settled either way, and I don’t care to talk of it any more. If you want to occupy your spare thoughts I have a topic to offer you.” “What topic?” Mrs. Dodge shook her head in a certain way. “Lily.” “Oh, dear me!” he said. “It isn’t happening again?” She informed him that it was, indeed. Lily’s extreme affections were once more engaged. “We’re in for it!” was the mother’s preface, as she began the revelation; and, when she concluded, her husband sorrowfully agreed with her. “It’s awful now and will be worse,” he said; and thus his “spare thoughts” became but too thoroughly occupied. In his growing anxiety over his daughter, he ceased to think of his neighbours;—the handsome chauffeur passed from his mind. Then abruptly, one day, as the wandering searchlight of a harboured ship may startlingly clarify some obscure thing upon the shore, a chance conjuncture illuminated for him most strangely the episode of Dolling. He was lunching with a younger member of his firm in a canyon restaurant downtown, and his attention happened to become concentrated upon a debonair young man who had finished his lunch and was now engaged in affable discussion with the pretty cashier. He was one of those young men, sometimes encountered, who have not only a strong masculine beauty, but the look of talent, with both the beauty and the talent belittled by an irresponsible twinkle of the eye. Standing below the level of the cashier’s desk, which was upon a platform, there was something about him that suggested a laughing Romeo; and, in response, the cashier was evidently not unwilling to play a flippant Juliet. She tossed her head at him, tapped his cheek with a pencil, chattering eagerly; she blushed, laughed, and at last looked yearningly after him as he went away. Mr. Dodge also looked; for the young man was Dolling, once Mrs. Leslie Braithwaite’s chauffeur. “Fine little bit of comedy, that,” the junior member of Mr. Dodge’s firm remarked, across their small table. “Talked her into giving him credit for his lunch. She’ll have to make it up out of her own pocket until he pays her. Of course, he’s done it before, and she knows him. Characteristic of that fellow;—he’s a great hand to put it over with the girls!” “Do you know him, Williams?” Mr. Dodge asked, a little interested.