The letter fell from his hands.

“Read!” he said faintly.

“Harold’s writing!” exclaimed Mrs Devitt, as she caught up the letter.

Devitt watched her as she read; he saw her face grow hard; then her jaw dropped; her eyes stared fixedly before her.  When Miss Spraggs read the letter, as she very soon did, she went into hysterics; she had a great affection for Harold.  The hand of fate had struck the Devitts remorselessly; they were stunned by the blow for quite a long while.  For her part, Mrs Devitt could not believe that Providence would allow her to suffer such a terrible affliction as was provided by the fact of her stepson’s marriage to Mavis; again and again she looked at the letter, as if she found it impossible to believe the evidence of her eyes.

“What’s—­what’s to be done?” gasped Mrs Devitt, when she was presently able to speak.

“Don’t ask me!” replied her husband.

“Can’t you do anything?” asked Miss Spraggs, during a pause in her hysterical weeping.

“Do what?”

“Something:  anything.  You’re a man.”

“I haven’t grasped it yet.  I must think it out,” he said, as he began to walk up and down the room so far as the crowded furniture would permit.

“We must try and think it’s God’s will,” said his wife, making an effort to get her thoughts under control.

“What!” cried Devitt, stopping short in his walk to look at his wife with absent eyes.

“God has singled us out for this bitter punishment,” snuffled Mrs Devitt, as her eyes glanced at the heavily gilded chandelier.

With a gesture of impatience, Devitt resumed his walk, while Miss Spraggs quickly went to windows and door, which she threw open to their utmost capacity for admitting air.

“One thing must be done,” declared Devitt.

“Yes?” asked his wife eagerly.

“That Hunter girl who split on Mavis Keeves havin’ been at Polperro with Perigal.”

“She knows everything; we shall be disgraced,” wailed Mrs Devitt.

“Not at all.  I’ll see to that,” replied her husband grimly.

“What will you do?”

“Give her a good job in some place as far from here as possible, and tell her that, if her tongue wags on a certain subject, she’ll get the sack”

“What!” asked his wife, surprised at her husband’s decision and the way in which he expressed himself.

“Suggest somethin’ better.”

“I was wondering if it were right.”

“Right be blowed!  We’re fightin’ for our own hand.”

With this view of the matter, Mrs Devitt was fain to be content.

It was a dismal and forlorn family party which sat down to dinner that evening under the eye of the fat butler.  Husband, wife, and Miss Spraggs looked grey and old in the light of the table lamps.  By this time Lowther had been told of the trouble which had descended so suddenly upon the family.  His comment on hearing of it was characteristic.