business. This last move of his proves it--to my satisfaction, at any
rate."

Lady Carbury, with a slight but impressive bridling, and yet with an
evident sense of discomfiture, proceeded to assert herself before the
clergyman. "I beg you will control yourself, Jasper," she said. "I do
not like to be spoken to in that tone. In discharging the very great
responsibility which rests with a mother, I am compelled to take the
world as I find it, and to acknowledge that certain very deplorable
tendencies must be allowed for in society. You, in the solitude of your
laboratory, contemplate an ideal state of things that we all, I am sure,
long for, but which unhappily does not exist. I have never enquired into
Marmaduke's private life, and I think you ought not to have done so. I
could not disguise from myself the possibility of his having entered
into some such relations as those you have alluded to."

Jasper, without the slightest appearance of having heard this speech,
strolled casually out of the room. The Countess, baffled, turned to her
sympathetic guest.

"I am sure that you, George, must feel that it is absolutely necessary
for us to keep this matter to ourselves."

The Rev. George said, gravely, "I do not indeed see what blessing can
rest on our interference in such an inexpressibly shocking business. It
is for Marmaduke to wrestle with his own conscience."

"Quite so," said the Countess, shrugging her shoulders as if to invite
her absent son's attention to this confirmation of her judgment. "Is it
not absurd of Jasper to snatch at such an excuse for breaking off the