“Harp?” Mary Houghton looked puzzled.

“I won’t go to their house again!  I detest married people who squabble in public.  Let ’em scratch each other’s eyes out in private if they want to, the way we do!  But I’ll be hanged if I look on.  She calls him ‘darling’ whenever she speaks to him.  She adores him,—­poor fellow!  I tell you, Mary, a mind that hasn’t a single thought except love must be damned stupid to live with.  I wished I was asleep a dozen times.”

Maurice, too, at his own dinner table, had “wished he was asleep.”

In the expectation of seeing Mr. Houghton, Eleanor had planned an early and extra good dinner, after which they meant to take their guests out on the river and float down into the country to a spot—­green, still, in the soft October days—­from which they could look back at the city, with its myriad lights pricking out in the dusk, and see the copper lantern of the full moon lifting above the black line of the hills.  Eleanor, taught by Maurice, had learned to feel the strange loveliness of Mercer’s ugliness, and it was her idea that Mr. Houghton should feel it, too.  “Edith’s too much of a child to appreciate it,” she said.

“She’s not much of a child; she’s almost fourteen!”

“I think,” said Eleanor, “that if she’s fourteen, she’s too old to be as free and easy with men—­as she is with you.”

“Me? I’m just like a brother!  She has no more sense of beauty than a puppy, but she’ll like the boat, provided she can row, and adore you.”

“Nonsense!” Eleanor said.  “Oh, I hope the dinner will be good.”

It was far from good; the deaf Hannah had scorched the soup, to which Edith called attention, making no effort to emulate the manners of her father, who heroically took the last drop in his plate.  Maurice, anxious that Eleanor’s housekeeping should shine, thought the best way to affirm it was to say that this soup was vile, “but generally our soup is fine!”

“Maurice thinks Edith is a wonderful cook,” Eleanor said; her voice trembled.

Something went wrong at dessert, and Edith said, generously, that she “didn’t mind a bit!” It was at that point that the race of God kept her father from murdering her, for, in a real desire to be polite and cover up the defective dessert, she became very talkative, and said, wasn’t it funny?  When she was little, she thought a harpy played on a harp; “and I thought you had a harp, because father—­”

“I’d like some more ice cream!” Mr. Houghton interrupted, passionately.

“But there’s salt in it!” said Edith, surprised.  To which her father replied, breathlessly, that he believed he’d not go out on the river; he had a headache. ("Mary has got to do something about this child!”)

“I’ll go,” Edith announced, cheerfully.

“I think I’ll stay at home,” Eleanor said; “my head is rather inclined to ache, too, Mr. Houghton; so we’ll none of us go.”