he side by which they must alight, made no movement. They were in a
high degree votaries of the latch-key, so that their household had gone
to bed; and as they were unaccompanied by a footman the coachman
waited in peace. It was so indeed that for a minute Bob Assingham
waited--conscious of a reason for replying to this address otherwise
than by the so obvious method of turning his back. He didn't turn
his face, but he stared straight before him, and his wife had already
perceived in the fact of his not moving all the proof she could desire--
proof, that is, of her own contention. She knew he never cared what
she said, and his neglect of his chance to show it was thereby the more
eloquent. "Leave it," he at last remarked, "to THEM."

"'Leave' it--?" She wondered.

"Let them alone. They'll manage."

"They'll manage, you mean, to do everything they want? Ah, there then
you are!"

"They'll manage in their own way," the Colonel almost cryptically
repeated.

It had its effect for her: quite apart from its light on the familiar
phenomenon of her husband's indurated conscience, it gave her, full in
her face, the particular evocation of which she had made him guilty.
It was wonderful truly, then, the evocation. "So cleverly--THAT'S your
idea?--that no one will be the wiser? It's your idea that we shall have
done all that's required of us if we simply protect them?"

The Colonel, still in his place, declined, however, to be drawn into a
statement of his idea. Statements were too much like theories, in
which one lost one's way; he only knew what he said, and what he said
represented the limited vibration of which his confirmed old toughness
had been capable. Still, none the less, he had his point to make--for
which he took another instant. But he made it, for the third time, in
the same fashion. "They'll manage in their own way." With which he got
out.

Oh yes, at this, for his companion, it had indeed its effect, and while
he mounted their steps she but stared, without following him, at his
opening of their door. Their hall was lighted, and as he stood in the
aperture looking back at her, his tall lean figure outlined in darkness
and with his crush-hat, according to his wont, worn cavalierly, rather
diabolically, askew, he seemed to prolong the sinister emphasis of his
meaning. In general, on these returns, he came back for her when he had
prepared their entrance; so that it was now as if he were ashamed to
face her in