spirits!--not you! And I suppose
you've quite forgotten that horrid quarrel between the hunt and the
farmers which was entirely brought about by Douglas's airs. 'Pay
them!--pay them!' he used to say--'what else do the beggars want?' As if
money could settle everything! And I remember a farmer's wife telling me
how she had complained to Douglas about the damage done by the Flood
pheasants in their fields. And he just mocked at her. 'Why don't you
send in a bigger bill?' 'But it's not only money, my lady,' she said to
me. 'The fields are like your children, and you hate to see them wasted
by them great birds--money or no money. But what's the good of talking?
Fallodens always best it!'"

_Marcia_--with the air of one defending the institutions of her
country--"Shooting and hunting have to be kept up, Winifred, for the
sake of the physique of our class; and it's the physique of our class
that maintains the Empire. What do a few fields of corn matter compared
with that! And what young man could have done a more touching--a more
heroic thing--than--"

_Winifred_, contemptuously--"What?--Sir Arthur's accident? You always
did lose your head about that, Marcia. Nothing much, I consider, in the
story. However, we shan't agree, so I'd better go to my choir practice."

When she was out of sight, and Marcia, who was always much agitated by
an encounter with her sister, was still angrily fanning herself, Connie
laid a hand on her aunt's knee. "What was the story, Aunt Marcia?"

Lady Marcia composed herself. Connie, in a thin black frock, with a
shady hat and a tea-rose at her waist, was looking up at the elder lady
with a quiet eagerness. Marcia patted the girl's hand.

"Winifred never asked your opinion, my dear!--and I expect you know him
a great deal better than either of us."

"I never knew him before this year. That's a very little while. I--I'm
sure he's difficult to know. Perhaps he's one of the people--who"--she
laughed--"who want keeping."

"That's it!" cried Lady Marcia, delighted. "Of course that's it. It's
like a rough fruit that mellows. Anyway I'm not going to damn him for
good at twenty-three, like Winifred. Well, Sir Arthur was very badly
thrown, coming home from hunting, six years ago now and more, when
Douglas was seventeen. It was in the Christmas holidays. They had had a
run over Leman Moor and Sir Arthur and Douglas got separated from the
rest, and were coming home in the dark through some very lonely
r