n words, and acted up to
them. And this revolt gave him a feeling, strange and so unpleasant.
Love! It was not a word to use thus loosely! Love led to marriage; this
could not lead to marriage, except through--the Divorce Court. And
suddenly the Colonel had a vision of his dead brother Lindsay, Olive's
father, standing there in the dark, with his grave, clear-cut, ivory-pale
face, under the black hair supposed to be derived from a French
ancestress who had escaped from the massacre of St. Bartholomew. Upright
fellow always, Lindsay--even before he was made bishop! Queer somehow
that Olive should be his daughter. Not that she was not upright; not at
all! But she was soft! Lindsay was not! Imagine him seeing that young
fellow putting her handkerchief in his pocket. But had young Lennan
really done such a thing? Dolly was imaginative! He had mistaken it
probably for his own; if he had chanced to blow his nose, he would have
realized. For, coupled with the almost child-like candour of his mind,
the Colonel had real administrative vigour, a true sense of practical
values; an ounce of illustration was always worth to him a pound of
theory! Dolly was given to riding off on theories. Thank God! she never
acted on 'em!

He said gently:

"My dear! Young Lennan may be an artist and all that, but he's a
gentleman! I know old Heatherley, his guardian. Why I introduced him to
Olive myself!"

"What has that to do with it? He's in love with her."

One of the countless legion that hold a creed taken at face value, into
whose roots and reasons they have never dreamed of going, the Colonel was
staggered. Like some native on an island surrounded by troubled seas,
which he has stared at with a certain contemptuous awe all his life, but
never entered, he was disconcerted by thus being asked to leave the
shore. And by his own wife!

Indeed, Mrs. Ercott had not intended to go so far; but there was in her,
as in all women whose minds are more active than their husbands', a
something worrying her always to go a little farther than she meant.
With real compunction she heard the Colonel say:

"I must get up and drink some water."

She was out of bed in a moment. "Not without boiling!"

She had seriously troubled him, then! Now he would not sleep--the blood
went to his head so quickly. He would just lie awake, trying not to
disturb her. She could not bear him not to disturb her. It seemed so
selfish of her! She o