aved her many enthusiasms from any charge of
sloppiness. Both, if exaggerated, still stood squarely, even gallantly
upon their feet.

Her mind switched back to the ever fertile question of the married and
the single state. She often wondered why Charles never espoused a second
wife. He would have liked a son surely? But then, were it possible to
find a fault in him, it would be that of a little coldness, a little
loftiness in his attitude towards women. He was too far above them in
intellect and experience, she supposed, and through all the remarkable
military commands he had held, administrative posts he had occupied,
quite to come down to their level. In some ways Damaris was very like
him--clever, lofty too at moments. Possibly this accounted for her
apparent indifference to affairs of the heart and to lovers. Anyhow, she
had ample time before her still in relation to all that.

Miss Felicia passed into the road. About fifty yards distant she saw the
servants--Mary, Mrs. Cooper and Patch--standing close together in a
quaint, solemn, little bunch. The two small Patches circled round the
said bunch, patiently expectant, not being admitted evidently to whatever
deliberations their elders and betters had in hand.

Felicia Verity's relations with the servants were invariably excellent.
Yet, finding them in mufti, outside the boundaries of her brother's
demesne thus, she was conscious of a certain modesty, hesitating alike to
intrude upon their confabulations and to pass onward without a trifle
amiable of talk. She advanced, smiling, nodded to the two women, then--

"A delicious day, isn't it, Patch?" she said, adding, for lack of a more
pertinent remark--"What kind of sermon did the new curate, Mr. Sawyer,
give you?--A good one, I hope?"

A pause followed this guileless question, during which Mary looked on the
ground, Mrs. Cooper murmured: "Oh! dear, oh, dear!" under her breath, and
Patch swallowed visibly before finding voice to reply:

"One, I regret to say, ma'am, he never ought to have preached."

"Poor young man!" she laughed it off. "You're a terribly severe critic,
I'm afraid, Patch. Probably he was nervous."

"And reason enough. You might think Satan himself stood at his elbow, the
wicked things he said."

This statement, coming from the mild and cow-like Mrs. Cooper, caused
Felicia Verity the liveliest surprise. She glanced enquiringly from one
to the other of the little group, reading constraint and ha