etters as admit the
possibility of making use of adventitious knowledge. So far tradition,
and indeed character, made them feel at one, and conspire freely. But
they diverged on a deeper plane. Mrs. Ercott had SAID, indeed, that here
was something which could not be controlled; the Colonel had FELT it--a
very different thing! Less tolerant in theory, he was touched at heart;
Mrs. Ercott, in theory almost approving--she read that dangerous
authoress, George Eliot--at heart felt cold towards her husband's niece.
For these reasons they could not in fact conspire without, in the end,
saying suddenly: "Well, it's no good talking about it!" and almost at
once beginning to talk about it again.

In proposing to her that mule, the Colonel had not had time, or, rather,
not quite conviction enough as to his line of action, to explain so
immediately the new need for her to sit upon it. It was only when, to
his somewhat strange relief, she had refused the expedition, and Olive
had started without them, that he told her of the meeting in the Gardens,
of which he had been witness. She then said at once that if she had
known she would, of course, have put up with anything in order to go; not
because she approved of interfering, but because they must think of
Robert! And the Colonel had said: "D--n the fellow!" And there the
matter had rested for the moment, for both of them were, wondering a
little which fellow it was that he had damned. That indeed was the
trouble. If the Colonel had not cared so much about his niece, and had
liked, instead of rather disliking Cramier; if Mrs. Ercott had not found
Mark Lennan a 'nice boy,' and had not secretly felt her husband's niece
rather dangerous to her peace of mind; if, in few words, those three had
been puppets made of wood and worked by law, it would have been so much
simpler for all concerned. It was the discovery that there was a
personal equation in such matters, instead of just a simple rule of
three, which disorganized the Colonel and made him almost angry; which
depressed Mrs. Ercott and made her almost silent. . . . These two good
souls had stumbled on a problem which has divided the world from birth.
Shall cases be decided on their individual merits, or according to formal
codes?

Beneath an appearance and a vocabulary more orthodox than ever, the
Colonel's allegiance to Authority and the laws of Form was really shaken;
he simply could not get out of his head the sight of