*

"Doll," said Sybell Loftus to her husband at breakfast, "I've made another match. I thought at the time he liked her. You remember Rachel West, not pretty, but with a nice expression—and what does beauty matter? She is engaged to Mr. Scarlett."

"Quiet, decent chap," said Doll; "and I like her. No nonsense about her. Good thing he wasn't drowned."

"Mr. Harvey will feel it. He confided to me that she was his ideal. Now Rachel is everything that is sweet and good and dear, and she will make a most excellent wife, but I should never have thought, would you, that she could be anybody's ideal?"

Doll opened his mouth to say, "That depends," but remembered that his wife had taken an unaccountable dislike to that simple phrase, and remained silent.

*

Captain Pratt, who was spending Christmas with his family, was the only person at Warpington Towers who read the papers. On this particular morning he came down to a late breakfast after the others had finished. His father, who was always down at eight, secretly admired his son's aristocratic habits, while he affected to laugh at them. "Shameful luxurious ways, these young men in the Guards. Fashionable society is rotten, sir; rotten to the core. Never get up till noon. My boy is as bad as any of them."

Captain Pratt propped up the paper open before him while he sipped his coffee and glanced down the columns. His travelling eye reached Hugh's engagement.

Captain Pratt rarely betrayed any feeling except ennui, but as he read, astonishment got the better of him.

"By George!" he said, below his breath.

The bit of omelette on its way to his mouth was slowly lowered again, and remained sticking on the end of his fork.

What did it mean? He recalled that scene in Hugh's rooms only last week. He had spoken of it to no one, for he intended to earn gratitude by his discretion. Of course, Scarlett was going to marry Lady Newhaven after a decent interval. She was a very beautiful woman, with a large jointure, and she was obviously in love with him. The question of her conduct was not considered. It never entered Captain Pratt's head, any more than that of a ten-year-old child. He was aware that all the women of the upper classes were immoral, except newly come-out girls. That was an established fact. The only difference between the individuals, which caused a separation as of the sheep from the goats, was whether they were compromised or not. Lady Newhaven was not, unless he chose to compromise her. No breath of scandal had ever touched her.

But what was Scarlett about? Could they have quarrelled? What did it mean? And what would she do now?

"By George!" said Captain Pratt, again, and the agate eyes narrowed down to two slits.

He sat a long time motionless, his untasted breakfast before him. His mind was working, weighing, applying now its scales, now its thermometer.