their money joined to land.  Whether this was a little late in the day, and those rewards of the possessive instinct, lands and money, destined for the melting-pot—­was still a question so moot that it was not mooted.  After all, Timothy had said Consols were goin’ up.  Timothy, the last, the missing link; Timothy, in extremis on the Bayswater Road—­so Francie had reported.  It was whispered, too, that this young Mont was a sort of socialist—­strangely wise of him, and in the nature of insurance, considering the days they lived in.  There was no uneasiness on that score.  The landed classes produced that sort of amiable foolishness at times, turned to safe uses and confined to theory.  As George remarked to his sister Francie:  “They’ll soon be having puppies—­that’ll give him pause.”

The church with white flowers and something blue in the middle of the East window looked extremely chaste, as though endeavouring to counteract the somewhat lurid phraseology of a Service calculated to keep the thoughts of all on puppies.  Forsytes, Haymans, Tweetymans, sat in the left aisle; Monts, Charwells; Muskhams in the right; while a sprinkling of Fleur’s fellow-sufferers at school, and of Mont’s fellow-sufferers in, the War, gaped indiscriminately from either side, and three maiden ladies, who had dropped in on their way from Skyward’s brought up the rear, together with two Mont retainers and Fleur’s old nurse.  In the unsettled state of the country as full a house as could be expected.

Mrs. Val Dartie, who sat with her husband in the third row, squeezed his hand more than once during the performance.  To her, who knew the plot of this tragi-comedy, its most dramatic moment was well-nigh painful.  ’I wonder if Jon knows by instinct,’ she thought—­Jon, out in British Columbia.  She had received a letter from him only that morning which had made her smile and say: 

“Jon’s in British Columbia, Val, because he wants to be in California.  He thinks it’s too nice there.”

“Oh!” said Val, “so he’s beginning to see a joke again.”

“He’s bought some land and sent for his mother.”

“What on earth will she do out there?”

“All she cares about is Jon.  Do you still think it a happy release?”

Val’s shrewd eyes narrowed to grey pin-points between their dark lashes.

“Fleur wouldn’t have suited him a bit.  She’s not bred right.”

“Poor little Fleur!” sighed Holly.  Ah! it was strange—­this marriage.  The young man, Mont, had caught her on the rebound, of course, in the reckless mood of one whose ship has just gone down.  Such a plunge could not but be—­as Val put it—­an outside chance.  There was little to be told from the back view of her young cousin’s veil, and Holly’s eyes reviewed the general aspect of this Christian wedding.  She, who had made a love-match which had been successful, had a horror of unhappy marriages.  This might not be one in the end—­but it was clearly