he world now for many, many years, and I've learnt that only
great wisdom and great love can change people's decisions as to their way
of life, or turn them from evil courses. Frankly, my child, I doubt if
you have, where Nan is concerned, enough wisdom or enough love. Enough
sympathy, I should rather say, for you have love. But do you feel you
understand the child enough to interfere wisely and successfully?"

"Oh, you think I'm a fool, mother; of course I know you've always thought
me a fool. Good God, if a mother can't interfere with her own daughter to
save her from wickedness and disaster, who can, I should like to know?"

"One would indeed like to know that," Grandmama said, sadly.

"Perhaps you'd like to go yourself," Mrs. Hilary shot at her, quivering
now with anger and feeling.

"No, my dear. Even if I were able to get to Rome I should know that I was
too old to interfere with the lives of the young. I don't understand them
enough. You believe that you do. Well, I suppose you must go and try. I
can't stop you."

"You certainly can't. Nothing can stop me.... You're singularly
unsympathetic, mother, about this awful business."

"I don't feel so, dear. I am very, very sorry for you, and very, very
sorry for Nan (whom, you must remember, we may be slandering). I have
always looked on unlawful love as a very great sin, though there may be
great provocation to it."

"It is an awful sin." Mr. Cradock could say what he liked on that
subject; he might tell Mrs. Hilary that it was not awful except in so
far as any other yielding to nature's promptings in defiance of the law
of man was awful, but he could not persuade her. Like many other people,
she set that particular sin apart, in a special place by itself; she
would talk of "a bad woman," "an immoral man," a girl who had "lost
her character," and mean merely the one kind of badness, the one
manifestation of immorality, the one element in character. Dishonesty
and cruelty she could forgive, but never that.

"I shall start in three days," said Mrs. Hilary, becoming tragically
resolute. "I must tell Mr. Cradock to-morrow."

"That young man? Must he know about Nan's affairs, my dear?"

"I have to tell him everything, mother. It's part of the course. He is as
secret as the grave."

Grandmama knew that Emily, less secret than the grave, would have to ease
herself of the sad tale to someone or other in the course of the next
day, and supposed that it had better b