she could feel it, but she scarcely felt pain, only a great bewilderment, an incredulity that this thing, of whose reality her mind told her, but without conviction, should have happened to her, just precisely to her, out of all the people in the world.  People have felt this when that iron shutter that is called Death has fallen between them and that one who was their share of the world.  A part of them, some plausible imitation of them, can speak and act, and be extolled, perhaps, for facing the music stoutly; while the stricken thing that is themselves, is lying prone before the iron shutter; beating on it with broken hands, calling, and hearing no answer.

It was nearly a month now since Dick Talbot-Lowry had asserted his paternal rights, and had, following various classic and biblical precedents, sacrificed his daughter to his own particular formulae of religion and politics.  He would never know that it had been the appeal that weakness makes to strength that had given him his victory.  When he spoke to Lady Isabel of his scene with Larry, he told her that he had nipped the thing in the bud.  The damned puppy of a fellow took for granted that Christian was in love with him; but here she was, going about as usual, as jolly as a sandboy; “in fact,” Dick would say, plastering up with bromidic mortar the windows of the narrow dwelling wherein dwelt Lady Isabel’s soul, “all’s well that ends well!” With which valuable aphorism, sanctioned by a long and respectable past, the Major contentedly fed his heart, and tranquillised that of his wife.

Judith was less confident of the satisfactory end of all things.  She was, in fact, exceedingly indignant that an engagement so entirely advantageous from all practical points of view should be broken off; “simply to gratify Papa’s imbecile prejudices!” she declared, with her usual emphasis.  “Christian, you were a fool to mind what he said or did. He wouldn’t have died!  Not a bit of him!  Of course, Mother has got to agree with him—­that’s what he married her for!”

“Don’t tire me, Judy, please,” Christian would say, serenely.  “It’s all over now.  These discussions only weary me.  I assure you my philosophy is quite equal to the strain!”

“If that’s the case, I don’t know why you should look like a dying ghost!”

Judith had never entirely comprehended her younger sister, and she found her, as she said with indignation to the concurring Bill, absolutely dark and inscrutable over the whole affair.

“I know it’s hit her hard, but nothing will make her admit it.  I detest Spartan Boys!” said Judith.

The Spartan Boy in question, though aware of her sister’s ardent desire to investigate her wounds, had no intention of removing the cloak that covered them.  She wrapped it close about her, so close that Lady Isabel, while unable to stifle a motherly regret for the wedding that might have been, thanked heaven that Christian had not “really cared”; so close that even Judith said that, since Christian had not been hit too hard, though she regretted the coup manque she personally found some consolation in the fact that she would not be called upon to make apologies for the political aberrations of her brother-in-law.