“That’s as unjust as everything else you say of him. It isn’t plush; it’s velours,” Lily said. Then she asked ominously: “Mamma, what was it you merely mentioned?” “I told him it was getting to be about your father’s usual time of returning for dinner; that was all.” “_All!_” Lily cried. “When you _knew_ that Papa wrote him to stop coming here, and Price never does come any more when Papa’s here.” “Yes,” Mrs. Dodge said, grimly. “I’ll admit he’s that sensitive! Your father’s letter was courteous—but clear.” “Courteous!” Lily echoed, and she became tragically rigid. She breathed visibly; her eyes were luminous with suffering and indignation; her sweet and searching little silver carillon of a voice became tremulous and loud. “It was unspeakable! I never knew Papa had such brutality in him. And _you_—I thought you were my friend, Mamma; but now I _see_ what you did this afternoon! Price told you the story of his life because he was _defending_ himself; he was trying to make you understand him. And all the while he was trying to, you sat there coldly critical, and then insulted him by telling him Papa might come in. You did, Mamma! You did! That’s just what it amounted to.” “You consider it’s an insult to a young man to tell him that your father may be arriving home presently?” “Under the circumstances,” Lily returned, bitterly, and quite correctly, “it certainly was a deadly insult. And you say he isn’t sensitive! Nobody understands how sensitive he is! And to think he has to undergo such humiliations for me—all for me!” With that, becoming every moment more emotionally dramatic, Lily turned to a silver-framed photograph upon her desk, and addressed it, extending her arms to it in piteous appeal. “Oh!” she cried, “when I think of all you have to go through for my sake—for _me_——” “Lily!” her mother shouted. “Stop it! Stop that nonsense this instant. Good heavens! your father and I both thought you were getting over it. We thought you’d begun to see the truth about Price Gleason for yourself. What on earth has started you all _up_ again?” This was a singular question for Mrs. Dodge to be asking, since she herself was the origin of the renewal she thus lamented. Lily had indeed begun to question her own feeling for the romantic Gleason, as she had confessed to Ada within that very hour. Moreover, there had crept upon her lately some faint and secret little shadows of doubt in regard to the tale of Mexican slaughter and other tremendous narratives included by this new Othello as elements of his wooing. Left to herself, Lily might have found her doubt increasing; but her mother had changed all that in a few minutes.