“Ken’s no molly-coddle!” Ella had said to her complacently, in connection with this topic, and one of Ella’s closest friends had added, “Oh, Heaven save me from ever having one of my sons afraid to go out and do what the other boys do.  Let ’em sow their wild oats, they’re all the sooner over it!”

So Susan did not regard this phase of his nature very seriously.  Indeed his mother often said wailingly that, if Kenneth could only find some “fine girl,” and settle down, he would be the steadiest and best fellow in the world.  It was Mrs. Saunders who elucidated the last details of a certain episode of Kenneth’s early life for Susan.  Emily had spoken of it, and Ella had once or twice alluded to it, but from them Susan only gathered that Kenneth, in some inexplicable and outrageous way, had been actually arrested for something that was not in the least his fault, and held as a witness in a murder case.  He had been but twenty-two years old at the time, and, as his sisters indignantly agreed, it had ruined his life for years following, and Ken should have sued the person or persons who had dared to involve the son of the house of Saunders in so disgraceful and humiliating an affair.

“It was in one of those bad houses, my dear,” Mrs. Saunders finally contributed, “and poor Ken was no worse than the thousands of other men who frequent ’em!  Of course, it’s terrible from a woman’s point of view, but you know what men are!  And when this terrible thing happened, Ken wasn’t anywhere near—­didn’t know one thing about it until a great big brute of a policeman grabbed hold of his arm—–!  And of course the newspapers mentioned my poor boy’s name in connection with it, far and wide!”

After that Kenneth had gone abroad for a long time, and whether the trained nurse who had at that time entered his life was really a nurse, or whether she had merely called herself one, Susan could not quite ascertain.  Either the family had selected this nurse, to take care of Kenneth who was not well at the time, or she had joined him later and traveled with him as his nurse.  Whatever it was, the association had lasted two or three years, and then Kenneth had come home, definitely disenchanted with women in general and woman in particular, and had settled down into the silent, cynical, unresponsive man that Susan knew.  If he ever had any experiences whatever with the opposite sex they were not of a nature to be mentioned before his sisters and his mother.  He scorned all the women of Ella’s set, and was bitingly critical of Emily’s friends.

One night, lying awake, Susan thought that she heard a dim commotion from the direction of the hallway—­Kenneth’s voice, Ella’s voice, high and angry, some unfamiliar feminine voice, hysterical and shrill, and Mrs. Saunders, crying out:  “Tottie, don’t speak that way to Kennie!”

But before she could rouse herself fully, Mycroft’s soothing tones drowned out the other voices; there was evidently a truce.  The episode ended a few moments later with the grating of carriage wheels on the drive far below, and Susan was not quite sure, the next morning, that it had been more than a dream.