himself. He's simple and sane and honest--he needs affection."

"He would have quite the most remarkable of mothers-in-law!" I
commented.

Mrs. Pallant gave a small dry laugh--she wasn't joking. We lingered by
the lake while I thought over what she had said to me and while she
herself apparently thought. I confess that even close at her side and
under the strong impression of her sincerity, her indifference to the
conventional graces, my imagination, my constitutional scepticism began
to range. Queer ideas came into my head. Was the comedy on HER side and
not on the girl's, and was she posturing as a magnanimous woman at poor
Linda's expense? Was she determined, in spite of the young lady's
preference, to keep her daughter for a grander personage than a young
American whose dollars were not numerous enough--numerous as they were--
to make up for his want of high relationships, and had she invented at
once the boldest and the subtlest of games in order to keep the case in
her hands? If she was prepared really to address herself to Archie she
would have to go very far to overcome the mistrust he would be sure to
feel at a proceeding superficially so sinister? Was she prepared to go
far enough? The answer to these doubts was simply the way I had been
touched--it came back to me the next moment--when she used the words
"people like us." Their effect was to wring my heart. She seemed to
kneel in the dust, and I felt in a manner ashamed that I had let her
sink to it. She said to me at last that I must wait no longer, I must go
away before the young people came back. They were staying long, too
long; all the more reason then she should deal with my nephew that
night. I must drive back to Stresa, or if I liked I could go on foot: it
wasn't far--for an active man. She disposed of me freely, she was so
full of her purpose; and after we had quitted the garden and returned to