“I see,” said I, dryly.  “You played the farce for a limited engagement.”

“We joked about it a great deal, and I—­well, I got into the spirit of it—­one must at house-parties, you know,” said Goward, deprecatingly.

“I suppose so,” said I.

“I got into the spirit of it, and Miss Talbert christened me Young Lochinvar, Junior,” Goward went on, “and I did my best to live up to the title.  Then at the end of the week I was suddenly called home, and I didn’t have any chance to see Miss Talbert alone before leaving, and—­well, the engagement wasn’t broken off.  That’s all.  I never saw her again until I came here to meet the family.  I didn’t know she was Peggy’s aunt.”

“So that in reality you were engaged to both Peggy and Miss Talbert at the same time,” I suggested.  “That much seems to be admitted.”

“I suppose so,” groaned Goward.  “But not seriously engaged, Mr. Price.  I didn’t suppose she would think it was serious—­just a lark—­but when she appeared that night and fixed me with her eye I suddenly realized what had happened.”

“It was another case of ‘the woman tempted me and I did eat,’ was it, Goward?” I asked.

Goward’s pale face Hushed, and he turned angrily.

“I haven’t said anything of the sort,” he retorted.  “Of all the unmanly, sneaking excuses that ever were offered for wrong-doing, that first of Adam’s has never been beaten.”

“You evidently don’t think that Adam was a gentleman,” I put in, with a feeling of relief at the boy’s attitude toward my suggestion.

“Not according to my standards,” he said, with warmth.

“Well,” I ventured, “he hadn’t had many opportunities, Adam hadn’t.  His outlook was rather provincial, and his associations not broadening.  You wouldn’t have been much better yourself brought up in a zoo.  Nevertheless, I don’t think myself that he toed the mark as straight as he might have.”

“He was a coward,” said Goward, with a positiveness born of conviction.  And with that remark Goward took his place in my affections.  Whatever the degree of his seeming offence, he was at least a gentleman himself, and his unwillingness to place any part of the blame for his conduct upon Aunt Elizabeth showed me that he was not a cad, and I began to feel pretty confident that some reasonable way out of our troubles was looming into sight.

“How old are you, Goward?” I asked.

“Twenty-one,” he answered, “counting the years.  If you count the last week by the awful hours it has contained I am older than Methuselah.”

At last I thought I had it, and a feeling of wrath against Aunt Elizabeth began to surge up within me.  It was another case of that intolerable “only a boy” habit that so many women of uncertain age and character, married and single, seem nowadays to find so much pleasure in.  We find it too often in our complex modern society, and I am not sure that it is not responsible for more deviations from the path of rectitude than even the offenders themselves imagine.  Callow youth just from college is susceptible to many kinds of flattery, and at the age of adolescence the appeal which lovely woman makes to inexperience is irresistible.