“Good God!  But she hasn’t a penny!” he said.  He realised that the prospects of his father assisting him out of his many scrapes had declined since news had arrived of Harold’s unlooked-for marriage.  When the scarcely tasted meal was over, Montague sent Lowther upstairs “to give the ladies company,” while he smoked an admirable cigar and drank the best part of a bottle of old port wine.  The tobacco and the wine brought a philosophical calm to his unquiet mind; he was enabled to look on the marriage from its least unfavourable aspects.  He had always liked Mavis and would have done much more for her than he had already accomplished, if his womenfolk had permitted him to follow the leanings of his heart; he knew her well enough to know that she was not the girl to bestow herself lightly upon Charlie Perigal.  He had not liked Perigal’s share in the matter at all, and the whole business was still much of a mystery.  Although grieved beyond measure that the girl had married his dearly loved boy, he realised that with Harold’s ignorance of women he might have done infinitely worse.

“What are you going to do?” asked Mrs Devitt of her husband in the seclusion of their bedroom.

“Try and make the best of it.  After all, she’s a lady.”

“What!  You’re not going to try and have the marriage annulled?”

It was her husband’s turn to express astonishment.

“Surely you’ll do something?” she urged.

“What can I do?”

“As you know, it can’t be a marriage in—­in the worldly sense; when it’s like that something can surely be done,” said Mrs Devitt, annoyed at having to make distant allusions to a subject hateful to her heart.

“What about Harold’s feelin’s?”

“But—­”

“He probably loves her dearly.  What of his feelin’s if he knew—­all that we know?”

“I did not think of that.  Oh dear! oh dear! it gets more and more complicated.  What can be done?”

“Wait.”

“What for?”

“Till we see them.  Then we can learn the why and the wherefore of it all and judge accordin’ly.”

With this advice Mrs Devitt had to be content, but for all the comfort it may have contained it was a long time before husband or wife fell asleep that night.

But even the short period of twenty-four hours is enough to accustom people to trouble sufficiently to make it tolerable.  When this time had passed, Mrs Devitt’s mind was well used to the news which yesterday afternoon’s post had brought.  Her mind harked back to Christian martyrs; she wondered if the fortitude with which they met their sufferings was at all comparable to the resolution she displayed in the face of affliction.  The morning’s post had brought a letter from Victoria, to whom her brother had written to much the same effect as he had communicated with his father.  In this she expressed herself as admirably as was her wont; she also treated the matter with a sympathetic tact which,