anxious I would be about you."

"Well, really, Derek, dear! You didn't seem so very anxious! You were
having supper yourself quite cosily."

The human mind is curiously constituted. It is worthy of record that,
despite his mother's obvious disapproval of his engagement, despite
all the occurrences of this dreadful day, it was not till she made
this remark that Derek Underhill first admitted to himself that,
intoxicate his senses as she might, there was a possibility that Jill
Mariner was not the ideal wife for him. The idea came and went more
quickly than breath upon a mirror. It passed, but it had been. There
are men who fear repartee in a wife more keenly than a sword. Derek
was one of these. Like most men of single outlook, whose dignity is
their most precious possession, he winced from an edged tongue.

"My mother was greatly upset," he replied coldly. "I thought a cup of
soup would do her good. And, as for being anxious about you, I
telephoned to your home to ask if you had come in."

"And when," thought Jill, "they told you I hadn't, you went off to
supper!"

She did not speak the words. If she had an edged tongue, she had also
the control of it. She had no wish to wound Derek. Whole-hearted in
everything she did, she loved him with her whole heart. There might
be specks upon her idol--that its feet might be clay she could never
believe--but they mattered nothing. She loved him.

"I'm so sorry, dear," she said. "So awfully sorry! I've been a bad