years. But their love endures, you
see; and the silly creatures have a superstition among them that love
is a sacred thing, stronger than time, victorious over death itself.
Let us laugh, then, at Kathleen Saumarez--those of us who have learned
that love is only a tinkling cymbal and faith a sounding brass and
fidelity an obsolete affectation: but for my part, I honour and
think better of the woman who through all her struggles with the
world--through all those sordid, grim, merciless, secret battles where
the vanquished may not even cry for succour--I honour her, I say, for
that she had yet cherished the memory of that first love which is the
best and purest and most unselfish and most excellent thing in life.

XVI

Breakfast Margaret enjoyed hugely. I regret to confess that the fact
that every one of her guests was more or less miserable moved this
hard-hearted young woman to untimely and excessive mirth. Only Mrs.
Saumarez puzzled her, for she could think of no reason for that lady's
manifest agitation when Kathleen eventually joined the others.

But for the rest, the hopeless glances that Hugh Van Orden cast toward
her caused Adele to flush, and Mrs. Haggage to become despondent and
speechless and astonishingly rigid; and Petheridge Jukesbury's vaguely
apologetic attitude toward the world struck Miss Hugonin as infinitely
diverting. Kennaston she pitied a little; but his bearing toward
her ranged ludicrously from that of proprietorship to that of
supplication, and, moreover, she was furious with him for having
hinted at various times that Billy was a fortune-hunter.

Margaret was quite confident by this that she had never believed
him--"not really, you know"--having argued the point out at some
length the night before, and reaching her conclusion by a course of
reasoning peculiar to herself.

Mr. Woods, as you may readily conceive, was sunk in the Slough of
Despond deeper than ever plummet sounded. Margaret thought this very
nice of him; it was a delicate tribute to her that he ate nothing;
and the fact that Hugh Van Orden and Petheridge Jukesbury--as she
believed--acted in precisely the same way for precisely the same
reason, merely demonstrated, of course, their overwhelming conceit and
presumption.

So sitting in the great Eagle's shadow, she ate a quantity of
marmalade--she was wont to begin the day in this ungodly English
fashion--and gossiped like a brook trotting over sunlit pebbles. She
had plann