one conciliatory, the other dogged, both pursuing with unabated zeal the elusive prize of popularity.  He even began to feel a personal stake in the pursuit, not as it concerned Jane, but as it affected his wife.  He saw that the latter was the victim of Jane’s disappointment:  that Jane was not above the crude satisfaction of “taking it out” of her mother.  Experience checked the impulse to come to his wife’s defence; and when his resentment was at its height, Jane disarmed him by giving up the struggle.

Nothing was said to mark her capitulation; but Lethbury noticed that the visiting ceased, and that the dressmaker’s bills diminished.  At the same time, Mrs. Lethbury made it known that Jane had taken up charities; and before long Jane’s conversation confirmed this announcement.  At first Lethbury congratulated himself on the change; but Jane’s domesticity soon began to weigh on him.  During the day she was sometimes absent on errands of mercy; but in the evening she was always there.  At first she and Mrs. Lethbury sat in the drawing-room together, and Lethbury smoked in the library; but presently Jane formed the habit of joining him there, and he began to suspect that he was included among the objects of her philanthropy.

Mrs. Lethbury confirmed the suspicion.  “Jane has grown very serious-minded lately,” she said.  “She imagines that she used to neglect you, and she is trying to make up for it.  Don’t discourage her,” she added innocently.

Such a plea delivered Lethbury helpless to his daughter’s ministrations:  and he found himself measuring the hours he spent with her by the amount of relief they must be affording her mother.  There were even moments when he read a furtive gratitude in Mrs. Lethbury’s eye.

But Lethbury was no hero, and he had nearly reached the limit of vicarious endurance when something wonderful happened.  They never quite knew afterward how it had come about, or who first perceived it; but Mrs. Lethbury one day gave tremulous voice to their inferences.

“Of course,” she said, “he comes here because of Elise.”  The young lady in question, a friend of Jane’s, was possessed of attractions which had already been found to explain the presence of masculine visitors.

Lethbury risked a denial.  “I don’t think he does,” he declared.

“But Elise is thought very pretty,” Mrs. Lethbury insisted.

“I can’t help that,” said Lethbury doggedly.

He saw a faint light in his wife’s eyes; but she remarked carelessly:  “Mr. Budd would be a very good match for Elise.”

Lethbury could hardly repress a chuckle:  he was so exquisitely aware that she was trying to propitiate the gods.

For a few weeks neither said a word; then Mrs. Lethbury once more reverted to the subject.

“It is a month since Elise went abroad,” she said.

“Is it?”

“And Mr. Budd seems to come here just as often—­”