"I will, indeed, Mr. Putney," said the old maid, submissively. She let him walk home with her, and up the avenue till they came in sight of the house. Then she plucked her hand away from his arm, and thanked him, with a pathetic little titter. "I don't know what Suzette would say if she knew I had been to consult you," she suggested.
"It's for you to tell her," said Putney, seriously. "But you'd better act together. You will need all your joint resources in that way."
"Oh, I shall tell her," said Adeline. "I'm not sorry for it, and I think just as you do, Mr. Putney."
"Well, I'm glad you do," said Putney, as if it were a favor.
When he reached home, his wife asked, "Where in the world have you been, Ralph?"
"Oh, just philandering round in the dark a little with Adeline Northwick."
"Ralph, what do you mean?"
He told her, and they were moved and amused together at the strange phase their relation to the Northwicks had taken. "To think of her coming to you, of all people in the world, for advice in her trouble!"
"Yes," said Putney. "But I was always a great friend of her father's, you know, Ellen."
"Ralph!"