Mrs. Ercott raised herself.  He looked more good than ever; a little perplexed frown had climbed up with his eyebrows and got caught in the wrinkles across his forehead.

“I’m very fond of Olive,” he said.

Mrs. Ercott fell back on her pillows.  In her heart there was just that little soreness natural to a woman over fifty, whose husband has a niece.

“No doubt,” she murmured.

Something vague moved deep down in the Colonel; he stretched out his hand.  In that strip of gloom between the beds it encountered another hand, which squeezed it rather hard.

He said:  “Look here, old girl!” and there was silence.

Mrs. Ercott in her turn was thinking.  Her thoughts were flat and rapid like her voice, but had that sort of sentiment which accompanies the mental exercise of women with good hearts.  Poor young man!  And poor Olive!  But was a woman ever to be pitied, when she was so pretty as that!  Besides, when all was said and done, she had a fine-looking man for husband; in Parliament, with a career, and fond of her—­decidedly.  And their little house in London, so close to Westminster, was a distinct dear; and nothing could be more charming than their cottage by the river.  Was Olive, then, to be pitied?  And yet—­she was not happy.  It was no good pretending that she was happy.  All very well to say that such things were within one’s control, but if you read novels at all, you knew they weren’t.  There was such a thing as incompatibility.  Oh yes!  And there was the matter of difference in their ages!  Olive was twenty-six, Robert Cramier forty-two.  And now this young Mark Lennan was in love with her.  What if she were in love with him!  John would realize then, perhaps, that the young flew to the young.  For men—­even the best, like John, were funny!  She would never dream of feeling for any of her nephews as John clearly felt for Olive.

The Colonel’s voice broke in on her thoughts.

“Nice young fellow—­Lennan!  Great pity!  Better sheer off—­if he’s getting—­”

And, rather suddenly, she answered: 

“Suppose he can’t!”

“Can’t?”

“Did you never hear of a ’grande passion’?”

The Colonel rose on his elbow.  This was another of those occasions that showed him how, during the later years of his service in Madras and Upper Burmah, when Dolly’s health had not been equal to the heat, she had picked up in London a queer way of looking at things—­as if they were not—­not so right or wrong as—­as he felt them to be.  And he repeated those two French words in his own way, adding: 

“Isn’t that just what I’m saying?  The sooner he stands clear, the better.”

But Mrs. Ercott, too, sat up.

“Be human,” she said.

The Colonel experienced the same sensation as when one suddenly knows that one is not digesting food.  Because young Lennan was in danger of getting into a dishonourable fix, he was told to be human!  Really, Dolly was—!  The white blur of her new boudoir cap suddenly impinged on his consciousness.  Surely she was not getting—­un-English!  At her time of life!