“Newbolt?  I don’t remember—­”

“Yes, you do.  Pop eyes.  Fat.  Talked every minute, and everything she said a nonsequitur.  I used to wonder why her husband didn’t choke her.  He was on our board.  Died the year we came up here.  Talked to death, probably.”

“Oh yes.  I remember her.  Well?”

“I thought she might make things pleasant for Maurice while he was cramming.  He doesn’t know a soul in Mercer, and Bradley’s game leg wouldn’t help out with sociability.  So I gave him letters to two or three people.  Mrs. Newbolt was one of them.  I hated her, because she dropped her g’s; but she had good food, and I thought she’d ask him to dinner once in a while.”

“Well?”

“She did. And he’s married her niece.”

“What!  Without your consent!  I’m shocked that Mrs. Newbolt permitted—­”

“Probably her permission wasn’t asked, any more than mine.”

“You mean an elopement?  How outrageous in Maurice!” Mrs. Houghton said.

Her husband agreed.  “Abominable!  Mary, do you mind if I smoke?”

“Very much; but you’ll do it all the same.  I suppose the girl’s a mere child?” Then she quailed.  “Henry!—­she’s respectable, isn’t she?  I couldn’t bear it, if—­if she was some—­dreadful person.”

He sheltered a sputtering match in his curving hand and lighted a cigar; then he said, “Oh, I suppose she’s respectable enough; but she’s certainly ‘dreadful.’  He says she’s a music teacher.  Probably caught him that way.  Music would lead Maurice by the nose.  Confound that boy!  And his father trusted me.”  His face twitched with distress.  “As for being a ’mere child,’—­there; read his letter.”

She took it, fumbling about for her spectacles; halfway through, she gave an exclamation of dismay. “’A few years older’?—­she must be twenty years older!”

“Good heavens, Mary!”

“Well, perhaps not quite twenty, but—­”

Henry Houghton groaned.  “I’ll tell Bradley my opinion of him as a coach.”

“My dear, Mr. Bradley couldn’t have prevented it....  Yes; I remember her perfectly.  She came to tea with Mrs. Newbolt several times.  Rather a temperamental person, I thought.”

“‘Temperamental’?  May the Lord have mercy on him!” he said.  “Yes, it comes back to me.  Dark eyes?  Looked like one of Rossetti’s women?”

“Yes.  Handsome, but a little stupid.  She’s proved that by marrying Maurice!  Oh, what a fool!” Then she tried to console him:  “But one of the happiest marriages I ever knew, was between a man of thirty and a much older woman.”

“But not between a boy of nineteen and a much older woman!  The trouble is not her age but his youth.  Why didn’t she adopt him?...  I bet the aunt’s cussing, too.”

“Probably.  Well, we’ve got to think what to do,” Mary Houghton said.

“Do?  What do you mean?  Get a divorce for him?”