t him. Evidently they have."

"Trust them for that!" said Judith, with a heavy groan. "I suppose
Larry thinks we shall all be delighted! What fools men are! Bill did
say once that it had been suggested--oh, ages ago, when Larry came of
age; Ma-in-law told him--but we thought it had died out."

Christian hardly heard what she said. She was standing at the open
window, in the stillness that tells of intense mental engrossment.
Self-deception was impossible for her; her mind was too acute for
tolerance of subterfuge; and for her, also, away and beyond the
merciless findings of intellect was the besetment of presentiment,
intuition, inward convictions that can override logical conclusions,
words that are breathed in the soul as by a wind, and, like the wind,
are born and die in mystery.

The last of the daylight had gone; there was a touch of frost; the sky
was clear and hard, the stars shone with sharp brilliance, some of
them had long, slanting rays on either hand that looked like wings of
light; a new moon glittered among them, keen and clean, and vindictive
as a scimitar; in the quiet, the low murmur of the Broadwater pervaded
the night. Judith watched her sister with unconsciously appraising
eyes, noting the straight slenderness of her figure, the small,
high-held, dark head.

"Old people are intolerable!" she thought; "she shall _not_
sacrifice herself to Papa's prejudices! If she likes Larry she shall
have him!"

But she was too wise to argue with Christian.

Dick Talbot-Lowry, though now arrived at the age of sixty-nine, was as
unconvinced as ever of the fact that time had got the better of him,
and that its despotism was daily deepening. He admitted that he had
become something of an invalid, but that his elder daughter should
have classified him as an old person would have appeared to him as
absurd and offensive. There are minds that keep this inveterate
youthfulness; that learn nothing of age, and forget nothing of youth.
It is an attitude sometimes charming, sometimes undignified, always
pathetic. Christian saw old age as a tragedy, a disaster, to alleviate
which no effort on the part of the young could be too great; the
pathos and the pity of it were ever before her eyes. In contest with
her father, if contest there were to be, she would go into the arena
with her right hand tied behind her back.

Without any definite admission of failure, Major Talbot-Lowry had been
brought to submit to having his bre