“Well?” she cried brusquely, after a painful pause.  “Is there any just cause or impediment that you know of?  You look as if you thought I had no business to be happy like other people.”

“Oh, if you are happy!  But I am so surprised.  Who is it?”

“Guess,” said Deb.

“I could not.  I haven’t an idea.  Some Englishman, of course.”

Deb shook her head.

“European, then?  Some prince or count, as big as Francie’s, or bigger?”

Deb wrinkled a disdainful nose.

“It is no use, Moll; you would not come near it in fifty tries.  I’ll tell you—­Claud Dalzell.”

“What—­the deadly enemy!” This time Mrs Goldsworthy did laugh.  Deb joined in.

“Funny, isn’t it?  I feel”—­sarcastically—­“like going into fits myself when I think of it, it is so screamingly absurd.  And how it happened I can’t tell you, unless it is that we are fallen into our dotage.  I suppose it must be that.”

“You in your dotage!” Mary mocked, with an affectionate sincerity that was grateful to her sister’s ear.  “You are the youngest of us all, and always will be.  Do you ever look at yourself in the glass?  Upright as a dart, and your pretty wavy hair—­so thick, and scarcely a grey thread in it!  Of course, I don’t know how it may be with him; I have not seen him for such ages—­”

“Oh, he is a perfect badger for greyness—­not that I ever saw a badger, by the way.  And he walks with a stick, and has dreadful chronic things the matter with him, from eating and drinking too much all his life, and never taking enough exercise.  Quite the old man, I should have called him a few months ago.  But he is better now.”

Mrs Goldsworthy gave a little shudder, and her unsympathetic gravity returned.

“I see,” she sighed.  “Your benevolent heart has run away with you, as usual.  His infirmities appealed to your pity.  You married him so that you might nurse and take care of him—­”

“Not at all!” Deb broke in warmly.  “And don’t you talk about his infirmities in that free-and-easy way; he is no more infirm than you are.  Did I say he was?  That was my joke.  He always was the handsomest man that I ever set eyes on, and he is the same still.  No, my dear, I have not married him to take care of him, but so that he may take care of me.  I’m lonely.  I want somebody.  I’ve come to the time of life when I am of no account to the young folks—­not even to Bob, who would not give me a second thought if I was a poor woman.  No, Molly dear, it is no use your pretending; you know it as well as I do.  And quite natural too.  It is the same with all of them.  Nothing but money gives me importance in their eyes.  And what’s money?  It won’t keep you warm in the winter of your days—­nothing will, except a companion that is in the same boat.  That is what I want—­it may be silly, but I do—­ somebody to go down into the valley of the shadow with me; and he feels the same.’  Something in Mary’s face as she stared into the fire, something in the atmosphere of the conversation, drove her into this line of self-defence.  ’Oh, there is no love-making and young nonsense in our case—­we are not quite such idiots as that comes to; it is just that we begin to feel the cold, as it were, and are going to camp together to keep each other warm.  That’s all.”