Mary came running down the stairs, agog with excitement, and manifestly curious. But at the foot of the stairs she halted abruptly, and surveyed the group in the hall in wide-eyed amaze. Tactfully she disregarded Esme's tearful condition and confined her attention to the dilapidations of her attire. "You've been in the wars," she said. "Come on up to my room; I'll rig you out." Jim Bainbridge, approving of his daughter's handling of an embarrassing situation, looked after the pair as they went arm in arm up the stairs; then, in answer to the question in his wife's eyes, he followed her into the sitting-room and entered into explanations. Rose took things more calmly than he had expected. The shock of the news left her bewildered and curiously at a loss for words. She found some difficulty in collecting her ideas. "I always said," she remarked once, "that it was ridiculous to swear so positively to a man's identity by the clothes he happened to be wearing." And after reflection she added simply: "Poor George!" Bainbridge's sympathies set strongly in the same direction. "That's how I felt about it when Paul walked into my office yesterday," he observed. "Yesterday!" she repeated. "You knew this yesterday? Why didn't you tell me?" "For obvious reasons," he answered. "I hoped when Paul heard of the second marriage he'd see the wisdom of clearing out. But he didn't. I wonder how I would have acted had it been my case? Whether, if I had disappeared and returned to find you married again, I would have slipped away and left the other fellow in possession? Largely, of course," he added reflectively, "it would depend on whether I wanted you. _If_ I had wanted you all right, the other fellow would have had to quit. That's as plain as print anyway. No doubt I gave Paul fairly rotten advice. However he didn't take it; so there it is." "You are positively immoral," Rose exclaimed indignantly. "There is no question about the matter at all. They are man and wife." "I wasn't dealing in morality in offering my advice," he answered, grinning. "I was thinking of the simplest way out of the difficulty." "The path of least resistance--yes," she said. "And it didn't strike you that in shirking difficulties one makes others? A fine crop of criminal complications you would have started. Besides, Paul isn't a man to take advice." "No; he is not to be moved from his purpose once his mind is made up. Incidentally, he's rather a fine chap." "He drinks," she said. "I imagine he has learned control," he returned quickly. "You are a little unfair in your judgment, aren't you?" "Perhaps I am," she allowed. "I never liked him. I resent his coming back and upsetting everything. What a talk there'll be!" "Don't overlook the fact that he saved us a funeral in the family," he reminded her. "You can't have it both ways. I consider it was providential his being on the spot. George stood to lose in either case."