"What do you think it is?" he asked that night, when after her nightly
custom Mrs. Haverford had reached over from the bed beside his and with
a single competent gesture had taken away his book and switched off his
reading lamp, and he had, with the courage of darkness, voiced a certain
uneasiness.

"Who do you think it is, you mean."

"Very well, only the word is 'whom.'"

Mrs. Haverford ignored this.

"It's that Hayden girl," she said. "Toots. And Graham Spencer."

"Do you think that Delight--"

"She always has. For years."

Which was apparently quite clear to them both.

"If it had only been a nice girl," Mrs. Haverford protested,
plaintively. "But Toots! She's fast, I'm sure of it."

"My dear!"

"And that boy needs a decent girl, if anybody ever did. A shallow
mother, and a money-making father--all Toots Hay den wants is his money.
She's ages older than he is. I hear he is there every day and all of
Sundays."

The rector had precisely as much guile as a turtle dove, and long, after
Mrs. Haverford gave unmistakable evidences of slumber, he lay with his
arms above his head, and plotted. He had no conscience whatever about
it. He threw his scruples to the wind, and if it is possible to follow
the twists of a theological mind turned from the straight and narrow way
into the maze of conspiracy, his thoughts ran something like this: "She is Delight. Therefore to see her is to love her. To see her
with any other girl is to see her infinite superiority and charm.
Therefore--"