“I want them to be happy.”

“Permanently, or for the moment?”

“Both.”

“An impossible combination, with these abominably inconsiderate marriage laws we suffer under in this country, my child.”

“Then what ought I to do?”

“You can do nothing but accelerate or hinder matters for a little.  If Hector is really in love, and the woman, too, they are bound to dree their weird, one way or the other, themselves.  You will be doing the greatest kindness if you can keep them apart, and avoid a scandal if possible.”

“My dear Crow, I have never heard of your being so thoroughly unsympathetic before.”

“And I have never heard of Hector being really in love before, and with an angel, too—­deuced dangerous folk at the best of times!”

“Then there are mother and Morella Winmarleigh to be counted with.”

“Neither of them can see beyond their noses.  Miss Winmarleigh is sure of him, she thinks—­and your mother, too.”

“No; mother has her doubts.”

“They will both be anti?”

“Extremely anti.”

“To get back to facts, then, your plan is to assist your brother to see this ‘angel,’ and smooth the path to the final catastrophe.”

“You worry me, Crow.  Why should there be a catastrophe?”

“Is she a young woman?”

“A mere baby.  Certainly not more than twenty or so.”

“Then it is inevitable, if the husband don’t count.  You have not described him yet.”

“Because I have never seen him,” said Lady Anningford.  “Hector did say last night, though, that he was an impossible Australian millionaire.”

“These people have a strong sense of personal rights—­they are even blood-thirsty sometimes, and expect virtue in their women.  If he had been just an English snob, the social bauble might have proved an immense eye-duster; but when you say Australian it gives me hope.  He’ll take her away, or break Hector’s head, before things become too embarrassing.”

“Crow, you are brutal.”

“And a good thing, too.  That is what we all want, a little more brutality.  The whole of the blessed show here is being ruined with this sickly sentimentality.  Flogging done away with; every silly nerve pandered to.  By Jove! the next time we have to fight any country we shall have an anaesthetic served round with the rations to keep Tommy Atkins’s delicate nerves from suffering from the consciousness of the slaughter he inflicts upon the enemy.”

“Crow, you are violent.”

“Yes, I am.  I am sick of the whole thing.  I would reintroduce prize-fighting and bear-baiting and gladiatorial shows to brace the nation up a bit.  We’ll get jammed full of rotten vices like those beastly foreigners soon.”

“I did not bring you into Regent’s Park to hear a tirade upon the nation’s needs, Crow,” Anne reminded him, smiling, “but to get your sympathy and advice upon this affair of Hector.  You know you are the only person in the world I ever talk to about intimate things.”