CHAPTER XII.
THE FLEXIBLE MIND OF A PLEASED HUSBAND As they entered the little reception-room from the hall, the doors of the next room were pushed apart and they saw Allan bowing out Mrs.
Talwin Covil, a meek, suppressed, neutral-tinted woman, the inevitable feminine corollary of such a man as Cyrus Browett, whose only sister she was.
The eyes of Nancy, glad with a knowing gladness, were quick for Allan's face, resting fondly there during the seconds in which he was changing from the dead astonishment to live recognition at sight of Bernal.
During the shouts, the graspings, pokings, nudgings, the pumping of each other's arms that followed, Nancy turned to greet Mrs.Covil, who had paused before her.
"Do sit down a moment and tell me things," she urged, "while those boys go back there to have it out!" Thus encouraged, Mrs.Covil dropped into a chair, seeming not loath to tell those things she had, while Nancy leaned back and listened duteously for a perfunctory ten minutes.

Her thoughts ran ahead to Allan--and to Bernal--as children will run little journeys ahead of a slow-moving elder.
Then suddenly something that the troubled little woman was saying fixed her attention, pulling up her wandering thoughts with a jerk.
"-- and the Doctor asked me, my dear, to treat it quite confidentially, except to bother Cyrus.

But, I'm sure he would wish you to know.

Of course it is a delicate matter--I can readily understand, as he says, how the public would misconstrue the Doctor's words and apply them generally--forgetting that each case requires a different point of view.

But with Harold it is really a perfectly flagrant and dreadful case of mismating--due entirely to the poor boy's thoughtless chivalry--barely twenty-eight, mind you--as if a man nowadays knows his mind at all well before thirty-five.