"You--you--" said Penhallow, as he moved away. "My own regret is that
I did not turn him over to the law. Well, points of view do differ
curiously. We will let him drop. He will come to grief some day. And now
take my thanks and my dear Ann's for what you have told me. Let us drop
that too. Take a pipe."

"No, I must go. I am the easier in my mind, but I am tired and not at
all in the pipe mood." He went out through the hall, and with a hasty
"good-night" to his hostess and "pleasant dreams--or none," went slowly
down the avenue.

The woman he left, with her knitting needles at rest a moment, was
considering the man and his moods with such intuitive sympathy and
comprehension as belongs to the sex which is physiologically the more
subject to abrupt changes in the climate of the mind. As her husband
entered, she began anew the small steadying industry for which man has no
substitute.

"Upon my word, James, when you desire to exchange confidences, you must
get further away from me."

"You don't mean me to believe you overheard our talk in the library, with
the door closed and the curtain across it." Her acuteness of hearing
often puzzled him, and he had always to ask for proof.

She nodded gay assurance, and said again, ceasing to knit, "I overheard
too much--oh, not all--bits--enough to trouble me. I moved away so as not
to hear. All I care to know is how to be of real service to a friend to
whom we owe so much."