g in its sleep the candour of
one at heart a child--that simple candour of those who have never known
how to seek adventures of the mind, and have always sought adventures of
the body. Then somehow she did say:

"John! Are you asleep?"

The Colonel, instantly alive, as at some old-time attack, answered:

"Yes."

"That poor young man!"

"Which?"

"Mark Lennan. Haven't you seen?"

"What?"

"My dear, it was under your nose. But you never do see these things!"

The Colonel slowly turned his head. His wife was an imaginative woman!
She had always been so. Dimly he perceived that something romantic was
about to come from her. But with that almost professional gentleness of
a man who has cut the heads and arms off people in his time, he answered:

"What things?"

"He picked up her handkerchief."

"Whose?"

"Olive's. He put it in his pocket. I distinctly saw him."

There was silence; then Mrs. Ercott's voice rose again, impersonal, far
away.

"What always astonishes me about young people is the way they think
they're not seen--poor dears!"

Still there was silence.

"John! Are you thinking?"

For a considerable sound of breathing, not mere whiffling now, was coming
from the Colonel--to his wife a sure sign.

And indeed he WAS thinking. Dolly was an imaginative woman, but
something told him that in this case she might not be riding past the
hounds.

Mrs. Ercott raised herself. He looked more good than ever; a little
perplexed frown had climbed up with his eyebrows and got caught in the
wrinkles across his forehead.

"I'm very fond of Olive," he said.

Mrs. Ercott fell back on her pillows. In her heart there was just that
little soreness natural to a woman over fifty, whose husband has a niece.

"No doubt," she murmured.

Something vague moved deep down in the Colonel; he stretched out his
hand. In that strip of gloom between the beds it encountered another
hand, which squeezed it rather hard.

He said: "Look here, old girl!" and there was silence.

Mrs. Ercott in her turn was thinking. Her thoughts were flat and rapid
like her voice, but had that sort of sentiment which accompanies the
mental exercise of women with good hearts. Poor young man! And poor
Olive! But was a woman ever to be pitied, when she was so pretty as
that! Besides, when all was said and done, she had a fine-looking man
for husband; in Parliament, with a career, and fond of her--decidedly.
And their little