her age she might take a little holiday, and leave
the Almighty in charge."

"Is that all you've got to say?" said Colonel Bellairs, somewhat
surprised. "Do you wish me to ask him to the house or do you not? I
don't object to him. I never did, except as a son-in-law, when he had no
visible means of subsistence."

"And no intention of making any."

"Just so. But I always rather liked him, and, and--time slips by"--(it
had indeed), "and I can't make much provision for you, in fact, almost
none, and I may marry again; in fact, it is more than likely I shall
shortly marry again." Colonel Bellairs was for a moment plunged in
introspection. "So perhaps, on the whole, it would be more generous on
my part to ignore the past and ask him to the house."

"After forbidding him to come to it?"

Colonel Bellairs began to lose his temper.

"I shall ask whom I think fit if I choose to do so. I am master in this
house. If he does not care to come, he can stay away."

"Ask him, in that case."

"You agree that on the whole that would be best."

"Not at all. I think it extremely undignified on your part, and that it
is a pity that you should be so swayed by Aunt Mary as to go by her
judgment instead of your own. You never thought of asking him till she
tried to coerce you into it."

"I am not going to be coerced by any woman, much less by that man in
petticoats," said Colonel Bellairs wrathfully. "But she will be here
directly. H'm! What on earth am I to say to her if I _don't_ ask him?...
She will be here directly."

They had reached Colonel Bellairs' study by now, and he sat down heavily
in his old leather arm-chair. Magdalen was standing on the hearthrug
near him with the letter in her hand. She held it over the fire, he
nodded, and she dropped it in.

"Perhaps, Magdalen," said her father with dignity, "it would be just as
well if I kept clear of the whole affair. Women manage these little
things best among themselves. I would rather not be dragged in. Anything
on that subject, any discussion, or interchange of opinion would come
best from _you_, eh?"

"I think so, father."

Colonel Bellairs watched his sister's letter burn, with the fixed eye of
one about to drop off into an habitual nap.

The asphyxiating atmosphere of a man's room, where a window is never
opened except to let in a dog, or to shout at a gardener, and where
years of stale tobacco brood in every nook and curtain, enveloped its
occupant with a delici