“I really think I must be,” returns he with a peculiar smile.  “It is only just now I am beginning to open my eyes.  My dear, good Margaret!” He lifts her hand from his sleeve and pats it softly.  “You are too good for this world.  It is you who are blind, really.  It will take longer to open your eyes than even mine.”  He runs lightly past her up the stairs.

Margaret gives a little cry of despair.  Colonel Neilson, catching her hand, draws her into a room on the left.  The expected “Coo-ee” has been called twice already, but neither Margaret nor Neilson have heard it.

“Marian has done this,” says Margaret, in great distress.  He has her hand still in his, and now, half unconsciously, she tightens her fingers over his.

“That woman is a perfect devil!” says the Colonel savagely.  “She is playing Old Harry with the régime here.”

“I can’t think what she means to be the end of it,” says Margaret.  “She can’t marry him herself, and——­”

“She might, you know, if—­if—­she could manage to prove certain things.”

“Oh no! I won’t believe she is as bad as that,” says Margaret with horror.  “She has her good points.  She has, really, though you will never believe me.”

“Never!” says the Colonel stoutly.  “The way she behaved to you this evening——­”

“To me?” Margaret flushes quickly.  The flush makes her charming.  She knows quite well to what he is alluding, and she likes him for being indignant with Marian because of it—­and yet, if only he hadn’t alluded to it!  It isn’t nice to be called middle-aged—­though when one is only thirty, one ought to be able to laugh at it—­but when one is thirty and unmarried, somehow one never laughs at it.

“To you.  Do you think I should have cared much if she had been beastly to anyone else?  I tell you, Margaret, I could hardly restrain myself!  I had only one great desire at the moment—­that she had been a man.”

“Ah!  But if she had been a man, she wouldn’t have said it,” says Margaret.  There is a little moisture in her eyes.

“No, by Jove! of course not.  I’ll do my own sex that credit.”

“And after all,” says Margaret, “why be so angry with her?  There was nothing but truth in what she said.”

There is something almost pathetic in the way she says this; she does not know it, perhaps, but she is plainly longing for a denial to her own statement.

“I really think you ought to be above this sort of thing,” says the Colonel, with such indignation that she is at once comforted; all the effusive words of flattery he could have used could not have been half so satisfactory as this rather rude speech.

“Well, never mind me,” says she; “let us think of my dear little girl.  My poor Tita!  I fear—­I fear——­” She falters, and breaks down.  “I am powerless.  I can do nothing to help her; you saw how I failed with him just now.  Oh, what shall I do?”