"Haryer, Pringle?"

Pringle, despite his stalwart masculine appearance, had in speaking a
surprisingly high, squeaky voice.

"I keep my health, thank you, sir," he said. "Anna has been somewhat
ailing." Anna was his wife, to whom he usually referred as "Mrs.
Pringle"; but he made an exception in speaking to Mr. Lanley, for she had
once been the Lanleys' kitchen-maid. "Your car, sir?"

No, Mr. Lanley was walking--walking, indeed, more quickly than usual
under the stimulus of annoyance.

Nothing had ever happened that made him suffer as he had suffered through
his daughter's divorce. Divorce was one of the modern ideas which he had
imagined he had accepted. As a lawyer he had expressed himself as willing
always to take the lady's side; but in the cases which he actually took
he liked to believe that the wife was perfect and the husband
inexcusable. He could not comfort himself with any such belief in his
daughter's case.

Adelaide's conduct had been, as far as he could see, irreproachable; but,
then, so had Severance's. This was what had made the gossip, almost the
scandal, of the thing. Even his sister Alberta had whispered to him that
if Severance had been unfaithful to Adelaide--But poor Severance had not
been unfaithful; he had not even become indifferent. He loved his wife,
he said, as much as on the day he married her. He was extremely unhappy.
Mr. Lanley grew to dread the visits of his huge, blond son-in-law, who
used actually to sob in the library, and ask for explanations of