anything which affected their own males, had
already grasped the fact that the rumour would, as it were, chain a man
of Miltoun's temper to this woman.

But they were walking on such a thin crust of facts, and there was so
deep a quagmire of supposition beneath, that talk was almost painfully
difficult. Never before perhaps had each of these four women realized so
clearly how much Miltoun--that rather strange and unknown grandson, son,
and brother--counted in the scheme of existence. Their suppressed
agitation was manifested in very different ways. Lady Casterley, upright
in her chair, showed it only by an added decision of speech, a continual
restless movement of one hand, a thin line between her usually smooth
brows. Lady Valleys wore a puzzled look, as if a little surprised that
she felt serious. Agatha looked frankly anxious. She was in her quiet
way a woman of much character, endowed with that natural piety, which
accepts without questioning the established order in life and religion.
The world to her being home and family, she had a real, if gently
expressed, horror of all that she instinctively felt to be subversive of
this ideal. People judged her a little quiet, dull, and narrow; they
compared her to a hen for ever clucking round her chicks. The streak of
heroism that lay in her nature was not perhaps of patent order. Her
feeling about her brother's situation however was sincere and not to be
changed or comforted. She saw him in danger of being damaged in the only
sense in which she could conceive of a man--as a husband and a father.
It was this that went to her heart, though her piety proclaimed to her
also the peril of his soul; for she shared the High Church view of the
indissolubility of marriage.

As to Barbara, she stood by the hearth, leaning her white shoulders
against the carved marble, her hands behind her, looking down. Now and
then her lips curled, her level brows twitched, a faint sigh came from
her; then a little smile would break out, and be instantly suppressed.
She alone was silent--Youth criticizing Life; her judgment voiced itself
only in the untroubled rise and fall of her young bosom, the impatience
of her brows, the downward look of her blue eyes, full of a lazy,
inextinguishable light:

Lady Valleys sighed.

"If only he weren't such a queer boy! He's quite capable of marrying her
from sheer perversity."

"What!" said Lady Casterley.

"You haven't seen her, my dear. A m