Had the heedless speaker glanced up from her play with little Gertrude, she would have seen her friend’s face suffused with a slight flush, for the last was a view of the case entirely new to her.  But she said, quietly as ever—­

“‘Everybody’ might be in better business, Nell; and why is it well for Willis that you are not in my place?”

“Why?  Because I’d pay him in his own coin; he should not have the game all in his own hands.  If he went to the club, I’d flirt, that’s all, and we’d see who would hold out the longer.”

“Bad principle, Nelly.  ‘Two wrongs,’ as the old proverb says, ’never make a right;’ and yet I am sorry I said that, for so long as it gives Willis pleasure, and he is not drawn from his business by it, it is no wrong, though there is danger to any man in confirmed habits of ‘good-fellowship,’ as it is called.  No one could see that more plainly than I do, or dread it more.  Of course, when we love a person it is natural to wish to be with him as much as possible; and I must confess I am a little lonely now and then.  But your plan would never succeed, nor would it be wise to annoy my husband with complaints.  Nothing provokes a man like an expostulation.”

“And what do you do, then?”

“Nothing at all but try to make his home as pleasant as possible, and when he is weary of his gay companions he will return to me with more interest.”

“Well, well,” broke in her visitor; “Morgan can make up his mind to a very different state of things.  I shall stipulate, first of all, that he must give up that abominable club-house.”

“And do you intend to lay your flirting propensities on the same altar of mutual happiness?”

Willis did not hear the reply, for he stole softly away, annoyed, as he thought, at having been a listener to what was not intended for his ears.  But there was a little sting of self-reproach at his selfish desertion of home, and, more than all, that Catherine should have been blamed for offences that any one who had known her would never have attributed to her.

“Ah, by the way, Kate,” he said that evening, turning suddenly, as she stood arranging her work-table beneath the gas light, “how about that invitation to Mrs. Sawyer’s?  It was for to-night, if I recollect?”

“I sent regrets, of course, as you expressed no wish to go; and, to tell the truth, I would much rather pass the evening quietly here with you.  How long it is since we have had one of those nice old-fashioned chats!  Not since baby has been my companion.”

This was said in a cheerful tone, as a reminiscence, not as a reproach; and yet Willis felt the morning’s uncomfortable sensations return, though he tried to dispel them by stooping to kiss her forehead.  Nevertheless, he ordered his coat, as the servant came in to remove the tea things, and took up his gloves from the table.  The very consciousness of being in the wrong prevented an acknowledgment, even by an act so simple as giving up one evening’s engagement.