ned to one side. "That might
be quite true in one way; but it wouldn't help Rupert Ashley to keep his
place in the Sussex Rangers."

"Do you mean to say they'd make him give it up?"

"They wouldn't make him, mother dear. He'd only have to."

"Well, I never did! If that's the British army--"

"The British army is a very complicated institution. It fills a lot of
different functions, and it's a lot of different things. It's one thing
from the point of view of the regiment, and another from that of the War
Office. It's one thing on the official side, and another on the
military, and another on the social. You can't decide anything about it
in an abstract, offhand way. Rupert Ashley might be a capital officer,
and every one might say he'd done the honorable thing in standing by
Olivia; and yet he'd find it impossible to go on as colonel of the
Rangers when his father-in-law was in penal servitude. There it is in a
nutshell. You can't argue about it, because that's the way it is."

Rodney Temple said nothing; but he probably had these words in his mind
when he, too, early in the afternoon, made his way to Tory Hill. Olivia
spoke to him of her father's losses, though her allusions to Colonel
Ashley were necessarily more veiled than they had been with Mrs. Fane.

"The future may be quite different from what I expected. I can't tell
yet for sure. I must see how things--work out."

"That's a very good way, my dear," the old man commended. "It's a large
part of knowledge to know how to leave well enough alone. Nine times out
of ten life works out better by itself than we can make it."

"I know I've got to feel my way," she said, meaning to agree with him.

"I don't see why."

She raised her eyebrows in some surprise. "You don't see--?"

"No, I don't. Why should you feel your way? You're not blind."

"I feel my way because I don't see it."

"Oh yes, you do--all you need to see."

"But I don't see any. I assure you it's all confusion."

"Not a bit, my dear. It's as plain as a pikestaff--for the next step."

"I don't know what you mean by the next step."

"I suppose the next step would be--well, let us say what you've got to
do to-day. That's about as much ground as any one can cover with a
stride. You see that, don't you? You've got to eat your dinner, and go
to bed. That's all you've got to settle for the moment."

Her lips relaxed in a pale smile. "I'm afraid I must look a little
farther ahead than that."

"