He was silent a moment. "I may have been nasty last night."
"You have compunctions? You're too good-natured."
"I dare say I hit rather wild. It will look better for me to stop over twenty-four hours."
Mrs. Gosselin fixed her eyes on a distant object. "Let no one ever say you're selfish!"
"Does any one ever say it?"
"You're too generous, you're too soft, you're too foolish. But if it will give you any pleasure, Mary and I will wait till tomorrow."
"And Hugh, too, won't he, and Bolton-Brown?"
"Hugh will do as he pleases. But don't keep the American."
"Why not? He's all right."
"That's why I want him to go," said Mrs. Gosselin, who could treat a matter with candor, just as she could treat it with humor, at the right moment.
The party at Bosco broke up, and there was a general retreat to town. Hugh Gos-
