Felicia Verity held the fronts of her long blue coat together, since the wind sported with them rather roughly, and went forward with her quick, wavering gait.

It was a pity Damaris did not marry she sometimes felt.  Of course, Charles would miss her quite terribly.  Their love for one another was so delightful, so really unique.  On his account she was glad.—­And yet—­with a sigh, while the colour in her thin cheeks heightened a little—­lacking marriage a woman’s life is rather incomplete.  Not that she herself had reason for complaint, with all the affection showered upon her!  The last two years, in particular, had been abundantly blessed thanks to Charles and Damaris.  She admired them, dear people, with all her warm heart and felt very grateful to them.

Here it should be registered, in passing, that the resilience of Felicia Verity’s inherent good-breeding saved her gratitude from any charge of grovelling, as it saved 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: