men.

But Dick, glancing at his watch, uttered an exclamation of annoyance. "Oh,
by Jove, I shan't have time after all. Gill is waiting for me now; we must
have dawdled over dinner." He went to give his mother a caressing tap on
the cheek. "Now don't worry," he adjured her; and as she smiled back at him
he added with a sudden happy blush: "She doesn't, you know: she's so sure
of me."

Mrs. Peyton's smile faded, and laying a detaining hand on his, she said
with sudden directness: "Sure of you, or of your success?"

He hesitated. "Oh, she regards them as synonymous. She thinks I'm bound to
get on."

"But if you don't?"

He shrugged laughingly, but with a slight contraction of his confident
brows. "Why, I shall have to make way for some one else, I suppose. That's
the law of life."

Mrs. Peyton sat upright, gazing at him with a kind of solemnity. "Is it the
law of love?" she asked.

He looked down on her with a smile that trembled a little. "My dear
romantic mother, I don't want her pity, you know!"

* * * * *

Dick, coming home the next morning shortly before daylight, left the house